Last weekend, Ashley and I both got paychecks and proceeded to splurge. It made for an awesome weekend that included the following: me hanging out in a cafe (well...Einstein Bros. Bagels) like a true writer while Ashley finished up at the fruit stand; us visiting our cousin Naiya’s lemonade stand/charity, where (instead of a birthday party thrown in her honor) she raised over $400 and donated it all to the Humane Society of Utah!; Ashley learning how to navigate automatic car washes; and us ending our Saturday by going to see The Giver.
Not gonna lie, I didn’t want to see this movie. I really wanted to see Guardians of the Galaxy (and I still really want to--anyone want to take me?). My hesitation was due in part to the lukewarm reviews it’s gotten online and in part to my general dislike of movies adapted from books.
But I was pleasantly surprised. I went in there with such low expectations that I left feeling like I’d gotten more than I’d bargained for.
Here’s my points breakdown:
+1 for being (for the most part) true to the story’s message, if not to its exact details. It was very uplifting, very well-made, and good enough that I didn’t resent spending $7 to see it at Jordan Commons. I was especially happy that they did start it out black and white, and occasionally went back to black and white depending on the characters we were seeing. When I first saw the trailer for this movie, it was in color and I wanted to scream. I'm so glad they left that in. It was the coolest part of the book, realizing that Jonas had never seen color before he started receiving memories.
-1 for being too short. Ashley, who’s read the book three times (I’m pretty sure that’s the only book she’s read more than once), looked at me when the credits started rolling and said disappointedly, “It was so short.” It should have been at least two hours, I think.
They didn’t explain why exactly Rosemary’s “release” ticked everyone off. I mean, that’s a very important part of the book, and is basically the only way the Giver knew his plan for Jonas would work.
And peoples’ motivations were just kind of rushed. We didn’t get enough of a feel for why people acted the way they did, besides the fact that “it’s a dystopia and the government made them that way.”
Like, why did that community leader lady know about murder and suffering yet oppose further Receiver training? Why were some infractions (like riding down a bridge on cafeteria trays) completely overlooked while others (like knowing a baby’s name before the ceremony) cause for serious alarm? We didn’t get enough sense of how the world worked besides the basic principles.
+1 for Jeff Bridges. He was amazing as the Giver.
-1 for the random cafeteria trays kept at the top of the random bridge in the middle of the community. I’m sorry, but that just made no sense. I wasn’t a huge fan of the love sidestory, either, but it did a good job of pointing out how sad it was that the community didn’t have love. In the book, Jonas is like 12 so he just noticed the lack of love between him and his “parents.”
+1 for the memory montages. Holy. Crow. Those were so beautiful every time that I kept tearing up. Whenever the stark, bland “utopia” of Jonas’s life was suddenly replaced by memories of the world as we know it, it was like a happy slap to the face. Life is awesome. The world we know now is awesome. I cried when Jonas heard music for the first time and saw memories of people dancing. The “courage and strength” montage the Giver gave Jonas right before he left made me feel so proud of the human race and so inspired to do something courageous with my life.
-1 for being made into a movie in the wake of The Hunger Games and Divergent. Even though it was a decent movie, I can see why those who haven’t read the book wouldn’t like it. They’d go in and think, “That was confusing. The Hunger Games was WAY better.”
It’s just a tragedy that this book, which was one of the first dystopian novels most of us ever read, is now being made in the middle of the dystopian YA hype, where there are so many “better” movies overshadowing it. (I say “better” because they’re all exciting and sort of thought-provoking, but none of them come close to the true message of The Giver. See the next point below.) I think it would've done much better if they hadn't aged up the characters and made it look just like every other dystopia movie coming out.
+1 for being so good at conveying the theme of the story that for the first time in my life I realized that The Giver is a metaphor of the choice made in the Garden of Eden. From all appearances, Eden was a perfect Utopia. No suffering, no sin, no bad weather, no pain. But without those things, there was also no true joy. No learning. No love.
Eve made the choice to bring all the bad things into the world so that the good things could also be in the world. "And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto the obedient" (Moses 5:11).
And seeing it as this movie portrayed it, I really wouldn’t have it any other way! Now I don’t know if the author of The Giver believes that Eve’s choice was against God’s plan or whatever, but she sure has a good understanding of why it was a good choice.
I believe that it was in God’s plan for Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit. I believe that not only because scripture supports it (see Moses 3:16-17), but also because I believe that God is perfect and loving. He wouldn’t have messed up with the very first people He put on the planet, and He wouldn’t want us to live in a world without true joy.
So anyways, when you total the points up, it looks like it gets… 1. But that’s not really fair. I’ll round it up and give it a solid 3.5 out of 5. With a book this good, it's gonna take a lot more effort and skill to make the perfect movie adaptation.
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