The Giver

2014 "Search for truth. Find freedom."
6.4| 1h37m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 15 August 2014 Released
Producted By: The Weinstein Company
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://thegiverfilm.com/
Synopsis

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.

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morpheas-01270 First of all, I just want to say, I went into this film knowing absolutely nothing about it, without even having watched the official trailer, only the very first 1 and a half minutes of the film, which caught my attention so I decided to go ahead and watch it. Also, this is my very first review on IMDB, I do not normally do this, but this movie is....special (not in a good way).Now that this is out of the way, let me begin: The movie starts well, with a good premise, that looks remarkably similar to that of Equilibrium (which is an amazing film and vastly superior to this one) which precedes this movie. One can wonder (I certainly asked myself that) if The Giver simply copy pasted Equilibrium's premise, but anyway, I digress. So far so good, I thought. However, the movie quickly becomes more and more nonsensical, to the point where I genuinely felt that my intelligence is downright insulted. It kept getting worse and worse, to the point where I wanted to stop watching and start cursing at the film's screenwriters. How did this script got approved and went into production is just beyond me. But what do I mean exaclty? Well allow me to be specific:(This is where the spoilers begin, reader beware) -Basically, the premise of the film is that in the future, in a sort of post-modern era, people have decided to create a hyper peaceful society where there is no war, conflict, cruelty, suffering, etc for everyone. So the way to achieve this, is to make everyone not be able to feel, so that they dont get angry, sad, or in anyway malicious. With good emotions come the bad ones, so they decide to eliminate emotion altogether. They achieve this, by injecting themselves with some substance that has this effect, and they need to take their daily dose, otherwise they will start feeling. As I've already said, this is pretty much a carbon copy of Equilibrium's premise, but I was willing to let that slide. After all, not all movies need to be unique in their premise. And this is really where the madness begins: Apparently, along with taking away all emotions, these shots also take away color, and they make everyone see in black and white. Not colorblind, but just see in black and white, as if it were an old colorless movie. Colorblind people can still see some color. No explanation is given for this, and we are meant to believe that this drug is able to make people see in black and white. Fine, I can accept that, as a stretch.The giver, somehow is able to hold memories in his head, of things that he never experienced. Those memories were likely experiences of other people, now long dead, but somehow he has those memories because other givers before him, transmitted those memories to him. That is what he is trying to do now: Transmit those memories to the protagonist, Jonas. The way to transmit those memories to him, is through.....well magic. I am not kidding here. Even though there is no concept of magic in this movie's world, we are left to assume whatever we want, because no explanation is given for this transmittance of memories from one person to another. The giver simply grabs Jonas' hands, and then Jonas sort of experiences a memory that wasnt his own. When he experiences that memory, Jonas also gains knowledge and starts feeling as well. How does he magically gain that knowledge? Well the memories are transmitted via magic, so why not knowledge such as words he has never spoken/pronounced. What the hell, if we are gonna make stuff up and offer no explanation, then WHY NOT?? Right?Now, a whole bunch of stuff happens, and I dont want to spoil the movie, but basically Jonas ends up trying to rescue a baby from execution, in order to run away with that baby. While running away, he goes through a lot of different areas. That baby sure is superhuman, able to withstand conditions even I, a grown man probably couldnt survive in, but somehow the baby does it! By the end of the movie, that baby will have survived:1. Being carried inside a baby basket while the basket is sitting on the front of a motorcycle, doing maneuvers and being driven fast2. Motorcycle doing an insane stunt jump from like 100 meters and then landing, as if it were an expert moto cross bike, and the baby inside the basket being perfectly fine, no harm done.3. Being carried by Jonas while he walks in the desert for endless hours.4. Sleeping in the desert and Jonas feeding it milk one time (that we saw at least)5. Being dropped (again!) from a flying jet, into the water of a river which is a result of a waterfall! A grown man could die/drown from that. Not this baby!6. Being carried (again) to the top of a mountain, with extreme cold and snow everywhere. Seriously, just turn off your brain here, dont think. Its just utterly absurd.7. Being dropped onto the snow in the mountains, laying there for a while, and8. Finally being on a crazy sled ride while the sled along with Jonas carrying the baby descends the top of the mountain reaching pretty high speeds.And what is the explanation given for the superhuman baby?? Well, Jonas is having his memory powers transmitted to the baby, and those memory powers also make you tougher. Because thinking happy thoughts about being strong and tough makes one tough! It makes babies survive extreme conditions, somehow their baby bodies become that of an experienced mountain climber.Sheer, utter nonsense.Also, the giver keeps repeating a whole bunch of nonsense about love, hope and of course Faith. Faith is placed alongside the other things, as if it is something great. He tells Jonas to question and not to believe what someone tells him just because he respects them, but then he tells him that faith is a wonderful thing. So....being gullible and believing things without evidence, even though it goes against logic and reason, just because it just feels so damn good....is a great thing. But I get it. In a movie where very little makes sense, where little to no explanation is given for things, we are supposed to have faith and just believe whatever feels good to us.And how is Jonas supposed to heroically save the day and make everyone feel and experience love and all that other stuff? Well, he has to cross the border, and that border is portrayed as some magical shield of some sort (again, no explanation given). But why does crossing that border make everyone magically feel? Well, dont question it, its just magic! Or, its a miracle! Nobody knows, I'm not even sure the screenwriters know, because they didnt bother with such trivial details!Lastly, the giver knows what is out there, he wants everyone to receive the gift of feeling and be free, he knows how to do that exactly, even knows where the sled is, but damnit he has to wait for the right guy, because....well Jonas just looks cool. No seriously, the giver could have done everything that Jonas did, even better actually, because he'd do it in secret and even prepare for the short journey so there wouldnt be any risk, especially since no one would find out because they had no reason to be suspicious of him and because they have no cameras in his house. So....Jonas was completely useless and in fact put his friends and family at risk for no good reason. Well done Jonas!Or should I say.....well done film producers/writers/director?The mindless drivel that is this film is just staggering. I found myself looking for an explanation, even going back and rewatching scenes, just in case I missed something....but alas it is really that bad. I could go on and on about the sheer irrationality and absurd nonsense that is depicted in this film, but I wont.At the end of the day, the only reason I do not give this movie a 1/10 and award it just one star above the lowest score, is because the graphics is pretty good, the sound score is above average, and the actors carry out their roles pretty well, especially Jeff Bridges. Brendon Thwaites (Jonas) is also excellent, at least within the limitations of his role in this movie.Overall, this movie is a big disappointment, even though I had no expectations at all before watching it. I wanted to like the movie, I really did. Towards the end, I found myself unable to keep making excuses for it, and genuinely felt that my intelligence is insulted, by this utter nonsense.If you want to just feel things and not think anything, watch this movie, it will appeal to your emotional side, but nothing more. If you even bother to think even slightly, not only you will be disappointed, but you will often find yourself predicting nearly everything that happens, especially in the extremely predictable ending which is basically shown to the viewer about halfway through the film, so you can avoid any surprises in the film's, terribly predictable ending.
gian_99 I watched this on Netflix, and was a bit unsure after reading some newspaper reviews from movie critics. I think this movie has been judged too harshly. I did not have any problem understanding the "how" human society got there. How it was possible to consider so much of the joys we take in life as something to be sacrificed for the opportunity not to suffer the pain we have. I did not have a problem to imagine a society orderly organizing the lives of every single member of the community. Some feature of the organization attained by the movie's society are old ideas really, out of some philosopher's dreams (or out of everybody else's nightmare): Plato's Republic came to my mind, during some parts of the movie, except that the society in the movies arrives to strikingly similar results from following objectives which are way different (getting rid of pain was not Plato's objective in an ideal organization of society). I liked the acting, especially in the character of the Giver, Fiona and Jonas. I think the use of black and white was interesting. What almost managed to ruin the whole movie was the rushed ending. It could have been much better: but as it is, it just looks like the money to keep filming suddenly finished up and they had to look for a quick way to end the movie. In any case it's still a 7.
dreamlife613 I'll start by saying that I did read the book many years ago in school and thought it was a good book at the time with an interesting, unexpected twist. I never went back to re-read it so while I knew what the gist of the story was, I didn't remember all the details.As a movie, I thought it was just OK. It wasn't bad, but there were several things keeping it from being great. First, the focus was on Jonas and The Giver moreso than any of the other characters, which made it hard to sympathize with the society. The actor playing Jonas was fine, not very memorable though. I would have liked to understand the perspectives of Fiona and Asher rather than just see them the way Jonas does - in broad strokes. The release of memories from The Giver to Jonas could have been shown or explained differently as I did not really understand how that process worked. Were they sharing a psychic link? Was there a chip embedded in their wrists allowing the transfers? Also, sometimes Jonas would see things as if he were living the past memories while other times it was more like he was seeing everything play out like a movie or something. Finally, the ending was not very satisfying. I won't spoil anything but there were things that happened that did not feel realistic or believable at all. The final scene was confusing. I would say if you have nothing else to watch and are interested in a fairly PG story, this is a pretty good one. So many TV and movies are so focused on violence, sex, and darkness that it is kind of nice to have a straight forward movie that makes you think a little in the process of watching it.
krokoschilla So, I had to watch this movie because of a school project after reading the book and have to say, I was amazed at the awfulness. The effects weren't ... that bad, I have to admit. My biggest complaints are the script and the actors. The book is kinda strange but it has a few very important emotional scenes that were either skipped completely or that were delivered so badly I wanted to chuck my phone at the screen. Okay, you may say that the people in this movie are supposed to have no real emotions and that's fine! But if you deliver these 'emotional' scenes without ever showing a reaction from the one guy having emotions (Thwaites) then that's just idiotic. The movie was chaotic, sometimes we all just sat there and frowned at the screen. There were a few 'twists' in the movie that were painfully obvious even if they didn't happen in the book. The few good (experienced) actors that were in this thing were apparently determined to deliver their worst performance yet. The main characters' (Thwaites and the love-interest) acting was so painful I could barely stand to watch it. Thwaites always had this look of vague awe on his face even if it didn't fit. The love-interest's actress was one of those actresses where they are completely unremarkable. One thing however stood out. Their laughter sounded so fake it hurt!Another major problem I have with this movie is 'the Giver'. Somehow, every scene with him and Thwaites has this sexual vibe going on which is really sickening if you consider the fact Thwaites' supposed to be sixteen in this and 'the Giver's about sixty. It really creeped us all out. In conclusion (because I have to cut this short) it's awful. Don't watch it.