Movie of the Week - The Giver

[jacey]

Supposedly 'social science fiction' but with a premise that falls apart on closer examination without inserting the use of magic into the proceedings. In addition it has plot holes you can drive a bus through.

There's a whiff of Divergent in here with artificial communities being created after some kind of apocalyptic war, but this doesn't have the spark that carried Divergent through to a nail-biting conclusion. Premise: all emotion has been suppressed by drugs to protect the isopated [population living in plastic hpouses and seeing everything in monochrome. Only The Giver (Jeff Bridges) sees in colour and has memories of how it was before. When Jonas is chosen to be the next Giver he receives the memories (by some kind of telepathic transference) and stops taking the drugs with predictable results,(starts to see in colour, wants to change the world)  but it seems that all he has to do to set things straight and return the memories to the inmates population is to cross some magical woo-woo barrier at the extreme edge of their known settlement.

I'm sorry but even sticking Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep into a banal film doesn't really lend suitable gravitas. The 'teen' cast was instantly forgettable (why, oh why, do Hollywood teens all look the same?) and the potential of the situation ignored. this is a prettily filmed slice of teen angst which takes far too long to tell its slight story.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The concept of people deliberately damping down some of their capabilities in an attempt to avoid disaster is much better dealt with in Pamela Dean's The Dubious Hills, which is one of the best books ever written by anybody.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll look that one up.