It must be the summer of dystopia,
especially if you're a kid. My son Nate watched Divergent on the
plane over to the US, and in North Conway, New Hampshire, I and my
cousins took him to see The Giver. He's ten, and he's gone back and
forth on which he liked better, but The Giver seems to have stayed
with him better. My cousins were in the book trade, and knew the 1993
young adult novel by Lois Lowry well; I hadn't heard of it and obviously Nate
hadn't read it. Apparently it's been adapted pretty faithfully, with
one big change: the characters are older: 12 when they go through the
ceremony and get their career paths in the book, but 18 (just like
high school) in the film.
On the one hand, since The Giver is
about a society designed to eliminate conflict by limiting people's
emotions and choices, removing everything from sex to colour to
music. Thus it's looked at as an allegory of conformity, a story of
how individualism triumphs in the end. There's nothing very original
in this, apart perhaps from its being directed at teens; you could
point to dozens of sf novels and many recent movies that explore the
same theme. I found it echoing Ayn Rand a bit too often; in this
society conformity is enforced in part through the killing of babies,
bringing a couple of the wingnut right's favourite tropes together.
On the other hand, it's appeal probably
comes from the obvious allegory of the teenage years, kids faced with
the alternatives of conformity or individuality, of following their
families or following themselves. Jonas (Brenton Thwaits) has to choose between his own perceptions and feelings and those prescribed by commmunity and family. Take either approach, and the film
of the The Giver reflects its 'young adult' source novel; neither
allegory is particularly overloaded with ambiguity, and the world
they inhabit sometimes seems to adjust itself to the storyline
without full regard for its own internal logic.
There are many times
the story can't suspend disbelief: the kids can't help being kids and
joke (and show jealousy). We see colours at times when we're supposed
to be seeing black and white. Asher, as a drone pilot, has seen there
is an outside world; we also wonder what the outside world has made
of this city on a mountain top.It's the dystopian Waltons atop Walton Mountain, and Thwaits as Jonas is our century's Richard Thomas as John Boy. Jonas is also falling in
love with Fiona (Odeya Rush, all wide eyes and open lips) and there's
actual conflict with his best friend Asher (Cameron Monaghan, perhaps
his generation's Peter Sarsgard) who becomes a drone pilot, whose drones somehow pass through the force field and transmit back to him only in black and white, even when they don't.
We also wonder what the community makes
of the police who suddenly show up on motorcycles (not the uniform
bicycles everyone else rides) and are adept at violence. We wonder
how Jonas knows how to ride a motorcycle, much less make an Evil
Knevil jump off a mountaintop. We then wonder where all the stuff
Jonas has escaped with actually came from.
In this effort to try and suspend disbelief, while appealing to its target audience, The Giver
is nicely done by director Philip Noyce, whose shots concentrate on
individuals, as if to belie their environment, and by his DP, Ross
Emery, who's especially taken with the contrast of the Giver's tower
with the rest of the community, and the outside world with that too.
He gives the snow scenes a gingerbread Christmas feel which implies
the fairy tale we are watching. But it's impossible not to note that
the film dissolves into a chase and survivalist race against time. Jonas and Gabriel have to sled through the force field surrounding the community, and reach Switzerland at Christmas, for the story to resolves itself. 
In those terms, it's a showcase for
Jeff Bridges, imparting wisdom to Jonas, who is appointed
the Receiver of Memory and told that he alone in this society is
allowed to lie. 'Precision of language' is one of the important
points of keeping conformity. As the giver of memory, Bridges plays a
cross between Gandalf and Leo Tolstoy, and almost literally opens
Jonas' eyes to the big world out there. His antagonist becomes the
head elder, played by Meryl Streep, but it will turn out that
Bridges' last, failed pupil (played by Taylor Swift) was also their
daughter, which raises a lot of questions about exactly how the
asexual, apersonal birth process actually works.
Jonas has also developed an
attachment to Gabriel, a baby his 'father' (Alexander Skarsgard) has
brought home from the maternity hospital; he's the weaker of two
twins, and if he doesn't shape up, he will moved on to 'Elsewhere'. His father's compassion is unexplained
within the constricts of the community; when he gives unacceptable
babies a shot that stops them breathing, and sticks them in a box and
drops them down a chute, it's hard to imagine what he thinks their
fate would be. That he's married to an elder (Katie Holmes) makes it
even stranger. And Holmes' presence as an elder is a question until you realise she's there for a purpose.
Because in reality, The Giver is about a
far important subject than the making of a utopian society, or the
progression of the cinema's remaining audience into adulthood. It's a
topic far closer to Hollywood's heart.
The Giver is really an allegory about
the fate of Katie Holmes.
When Jonas finally cracks the force
field we see Holmes shedding a tear. Even Bridges, the one person allowed
emotions hasn't done that.
And then we realise that The Giver is
about someone who's been a true believer in a cult and has just had
the realisation forced on her that what she has believed in was
false. Does that suggest a certain cult founded by an sf writer and
practiced by Holmes' former husband? Has she been given Alexander
Skarsgard as penance? If Meryl Streep is the image of Ayn Rand as
Scientologist, and Katie Holmes is her victim, what hope is there for
the rest of us?
