Something happened halfway through the current cycle of lousy Young Adult movie adaptations. Somewhere amidst all the Divergents, Twilights and Mortal Instrumentses I started to find these cheesy self-indulgent glorifications of youthful angst just a teensy bit interesting. Being a teenager is an intensely dramatic time when everything you do feels like the most important thing in the world. So dramatizing that time in a person’s life with sci-fi/fantasy elements that actually make their raging hormones and insecurities literally the most important things in the world makes perfect dramatic sense. So long as the movies are fun and come at their stories from slightly different angles, I am happy to keep watching them, pap though they often are.
The Giver is the latest pap getting smeared by critics across the board, but it’s not really worthy of derision. It’s a classy done-in-one sci-fi parable with pleasing evocations of early “Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits” episodes. The message may be obvious but it’s thoroughly explored; even the villainous villains have a perfectly valid point to make, and The Giver gives them equal time. Indeed, The Giver may give them too much time: by the end you may even find yourself siding with the fascists, but isn’t that interesting?
Indeed, that’s the mark of good science fiction, that The Giver can raise interesting questions and allow audience members to draw their own conclusions. The hero even suggests at the beginning and end of the film that he may need to apologize for his actions between those two points in time. It’s a blunt storytelling device, heaven knows, but it’s a blunt story that uses its various sci-fi conceits to bolster its two separate arguments. Compare that with The Giver’s sci-fi competitors – most of which use sci-fi/fantasy concepts as mere window dressing for conventional good vs. evil narratives and hackneyed love triangles – and ask yourself: which of these films is REALLY taking the easy way out?
The Giver takes place in a seemingly post-apocalyptic but also utopian future, where emotions are neutralized through daily injections, everyone is literally color blind and social equilibrium is maintained through constant surveillance and questionable population control programs. But everyone actually seems content in this fascistic wonderland. Cruelty is a foreign concept, prejudice does not exist and contentment reigns supreme in every household. Civilization in The Giver has sacrificed certain personal freedoms for safety, security and civility. Go check the news reports right now. Does that really sound so bad?
Well, perhaps. In the world of The Giver there is no history, no future, only today. A single individual in the social structure retains the memories of human civilization the way it was, full of beauty and love and violence and hatred. Their function is to advise in situations where the status quo is disrupted and difficult decisions need to be made using otherwise unnecessary experience and wisdom. And when the current holder of this position (Jeff Bridges) gains a protégé (Brenton Thwaites), the young man becomes so consumed by the sudden influx of emotion that he can’t keep it all in, exposing his friends and families to ideas that threaten the balance of their community and which may lead to an overthrow of their leader (Meryl Streep), who will do whatever is necessary to keep the balance struck.
The mechanics of The Giver’s science fiction elements leave much to be desired. Director Phillip Noyce seems to prefer elaborating on his film’s moral questions than elaborating on its nuts and bolts, which works fine until the nuts and bolts suddenly become important in the film’s big climax. The mechanics of our hero’s fateful mission make about as much sense as a “He-Man” episode, which is too bad, since the rest of the movie falls neatly within its own rules of conduct. It’s a well-structured, orderly movie that eschews conventional thrills in favor of thoughtful, albeit rather obvious allegories.
And while that may not be the single most exciting thing to watch, it’s also a damn sight smarter than most of its contemporaries in the YA genre. What’s more, it has the audacity to actually end; no cliffhangers, no unanswered questions that aren’t clearly meant to go unanswered. The Giver’s final image is a cutesy question mark that may or may not wish to be taken literally, and its final plot point may or may not be the best course of action, but it asks the questions, it contemplates multiple valid answers to those questions, and it trusts the audience to decide for themselves how they feel about it. That’s a solid little piece of sci-fi cinema right there. The Giver is a well-made movie that could have been a lot more entertaining, but also a lot less intelligent. I’ll take it.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
