The Giver (Philip Noyce, 2014)

[knives]

Hunger Games 4: More Hunger, Less Games?

[domino harvey]

Trailer

[Movie-Brat]

Oh, sorry. Didn't see this, I thought nobody made such a thread before I posted a trailer in the other thread.

[domino harvey]

No worries, it's just always a good idea to do a board check before posting a trailer or making a new thread-- I know "giver" is a tough word to search for, but all our threads have the director in the title, so if the title in question has too many common words, search that instead

[Movie-Brat]

No worries, it's just always a good idea to do a board check before posting a trailer or making a new thread-- I know "giver" is a tough word to search for, but all our threads have the director in the title, so if the title in question has too many common words, search that instead

Okay, noted. Thank you.

Anyway, I don't know what to think of the trailer yet; I mean the vision of the future, it's off putting. Like it's the same as any other dystopian film.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, I can't say I'm blown away either Movie-Brat, but one hopes with talents like Bridges and Streep involved, the final product will be better than what we're shown here. With all the similar sounding YA dysto flicks in play this year, you'd think they'd do more to distance themselves from the others rather than blend in

[Movie-Brat]

Yeah, I can't say I'm blown away either Movie-Brat, but one hopes with talents like Bridges and Streep involved, the final product will be better than what we're shown here. With all the similar sounding YA dysto flicks in play this year, you'd think they'd do more to distance themselves from the others rather than blend in

When I saw the trailer; I thought the cinematographer was the same as The Host (the Stephanie Meyer/Andrew Niccol movie). That kind of says something about how bland it looks.

[mfunk9786]

Next time you're in a bookseller, have a glance at the "Back to School" section (there'll be one) and you'll see the kind of "multicultural" books I'm talking about-- not works of accepted merit like the two you mention, but newer, hilariously PC mush written several grade levels beneath its target audience

Ah, The House on Mango Street, I thought I'd forgotten you forever

[movielocke]

It's a shame they're not doing the gradual addition of color to the world, but I'm guessing someone thought that was too pleasantville.

[pzadvance]

Or not enough Hunger Games

[Shrew]

If I remember the book correctly, part of the reason it's so effective is that it doesn't make it's world appear bad at first. No one's questioning the order of the society, and it appears to be functional and not that terrible. The color moment is point when the reader starts to realize that something is not right with this system, and it works because the reader suddenly becomes aware that the protagonist has never seen color before.

Starting the film off in b/w would telegraph the problems of the society early on. (Of course, so does a trailer.) I wonder if they might still include the moment, but as a series of subjective point-of view shots that contrast with the rest of the film.

[Movie-Brat]

So apparently, The Giver is in black and white after all.

[pzadvance]

So apparently, The Giver is in black and white after all.

New trailer shows more black and white footage and some of the color-transition stuff. I'm happy they're going for this in what's ostensibly a YA summer blockbuster. The young leads look pretty bland but hopefully Bridges, Streep, and the more compelling aspects of the story will still make this worth watching.

[domino harvey]

Bridges expresses regrets over compromises he made in order to get the film greenlit

[movielocke]

The Giver was a favorite book of mine from the moment I found it on the new release shelf of our school library, a year before it won the Newberry Award. I checked it out probably three or four times that year, every time a little bit sad, a little bit amazed, mournful, but excited, profoundly moved. As a child, in many ways, it was my first encounter with the experience of what literature, art, can accomplish emotionally.

In some ways, I think it may have been the first time I wanted to MAKE the movie I saw in my head when I read, because I knew if I made it, it would be so amazing and moving when the world went from black and white to color, when a little bit of red leaked into the apple or the girl's hair, and undoubtedly others wouldn't do it the right way, the way I would. And then I would think about it, riding home on the bus, and I kept running into a problem, if the movie was all in black and white in the beginning then everyone would know immediately what it was that Jonas 'saw' and the whole surprise, as I thought of it then, would be ruined. "it wouldn't work" I thought, not really understanding the different mediums, I just intuited that you couldn't achieve the same effect when you're not limited to the non-visual world of text as a book was.

And that is fine, but I was frustrated then, that you couldn't evoke the same feeling. I felt like if you couldn't evoke the same feeling of discovering color in a movie maybe you couldn't evoke the same feeling of the ending, of Jonas finding the impossible sled, and arriving at the mythical house.

Spoiler

because it was on one of the times I reread it in that first year, back in elementary school, that I was suddenly thunderstruck by the impossible existence of the sled at the end of book, that it just could not happen--that it meant Jonas and Gabriel had both died. The house was heaven I realized, but I knew that was not a happy ending, that Jonas' mission had failed and I was hammered by a more profound sadness than I think any book had ever evoked in me, at the tragedy of it all.

So I was relieved that although the film is marred by the schizophrenia of notes and it's own false happy ending, that it preserves that exact scene. that exact perfect ending of death in the snow, and the arrival at home (at heaven) that is tragic and beautiful all at once.

Of course the film has a lot of over explaining of its world, of the mechanisms of the mileau, of the specificity of Jonas' goals and the layering on of an additional component of 'rescuing' the whole community. A lot of that feels like a second writer to me, and of notes, the 'boundary of memory' is shoehorned in to add Griffith-esque tension to the ending, which is irritating, but well-enough pulled off as to not ruin the story. Because for all that this is not the book, well it's not the book, they expanded the story in ways that make sense for the screen, at the same time they are unnable to work within the stringent limitations of the community parameters, thus we have anachronistic slips, such as Meryl Streep saying 'a charade'. I don't think the story really needs a Pleasant-ville ending of restoration, I think it'd be far stronger without it. but I understand why it's there.

Because overall the film is beautifully acted, well paced, and actually in spite of the structural problems and combative voices of the writers and/or notes, the film is also very well written beautifully designed and decently photographed.

But there is a new thing that is niggling at me now, in revisiting a story I haven't read in fifteen years or more. and it gets at what the story accomplishes within our culture.

At it's most basic level, the story is something of an anti-communist parable. but it is far richer than that, as it uses this structure to explode and explore into tangible scenes the anxieties of youth and adolescence about impending adulthood and the untrustworthyness of authority--all mitigated by the lens of transforming the relationship of author and reader--the central metaphor of giver of memory and receiver of memory--into a sacred rite that passes on the secret knowledge of the world to the worthy and exceptional young one.

That sort of flattery of the audience is intoxicating, for all the profound literary effects the story had on me, it had them because of these mechanisms by which it persuades the audience of the special and exceptional qualities of themselves when they become Jonas in reading the book.

I find it so interesting now, that I had a youth in which I experienced only uplift and encouragement from the communities around me that nurtured and raised me, whether it was teachers, my family, or my parents, every community always encouraged advancement, inquisitiveness, going my own way. In many respects these groups were all strongly driven by exceptional women, though I did have some profoundly excellent male teachers in high school as well.

And yet the stories often encountered that I most attached to were always stories about the misunderstood brilliant young one suffering from the nefariousness of communities in trying to keep ME down, trying to force ME to not be an individual, to make ME to give up MY dreams. Although thankfully I never found Atlas Shrugged as a child nor teen, the books I was reading over and over again were all harping on the same persistent message and structure of protagonists as a JOHN GALT figure, brought down by the communities around the protagonists who were all suppressing his excellence and inherently not as awesome and special, and INDIVIDUAL as they were supposed to be.

I was raised in incredibly giving communities of support that encouraged individuality and achievement always and I was constantly seduced by stories of individuals in conflict with and contemptuous of their communities.

This in and of itself is not really a bad thing, I mean, I also watched professional wrestling semi-religiously for a year or two in junior high, there are phases of interest in our lives we all go through, when you're exiting childhood and entering adolescence, you're craving stories of individual achievement and it's damn hard to write such a story if the individual isn't on one's own and severed from a community and forced to do it themselves.

But the thing is, the message I internalized was not one of 'go achieve it you can do it!' the message I internalized was 'you cannot fail, you can only be failed by all those who are causing you to fail.' Instead of teaching me to critically think and problem solve and build relationships and communities and successes into a lifetime of achievement, these John Galt esque stories wound up teaching me to always outsource the responsibility (and blame) for not achieving what I wanted to at all times right now instantly.

And I think that's my ambivalence to this kind of story now, that in a way it promotes the thing I still struggle most with in my own life, the nexus of achievement or failure that seems to underwrite most of life, mundane or magnificent.

The Giver is a special story, a great entry point of literature within young adult fiction, a gateway drug to the more mature story telling of a catharatic and sometimes even tragic emotional journey. and I think the film has most of that there, layered over with extraneous world building and explanation. It brought me back to some of my own childhood memories and experiences that I had not thought of in more than twenty years, and so in a way, for all it's flaws, I kind of love this film for that.

and it has that perfect final scene.