The Giver : Lively film of lifelessness

The Giver

Starring: Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift, Brenton Thwaites

Rated: 5.5/10

Here it is for you — in black and white. It’s a colourless existence without pain, joy, envy, anger, no memory or much else that is usually associated with humanness of being. But here, there is no war, no killing (only release), no riots, no death, no negativity, nothing that might acquaint you with the basic human emotion of being either concerned or upset. It’s a cautiously carved life for a new kind of humanity which neither questions nor looks for any answers. According to the chief elder, brilliantly played by an aptly wrinkled Meryl Streep, this is the existence that saves human beings from the negativity of true life.

Settled on a table top mountain amid the clouds, children are not born to families but assigned to them for nurturing. Graduation and growing up are equally regimented, no questions asked. If the children are not up to the mark, they are routinely (and gently, if you mind) injected, put in a box and thrown into a tunnel to nowhere. Such are the genetically doctored beings that no one is moved by this ostensible mass and clinical murder, a word that neither exists or is understood by these homo-sapiens.

Amid these people, there is one — Receiver of Memory — who carries all the memories of the past within his mind and is not allowed to share them with anyone, except the elders who might need a precedent to solve a problem. This poor man experiences it all — love, pain, regret, humiliation, helplessness, joy, celebration, life and death. And he needs to transmit this powerhouse of emotions to the next in line to becoming a receiver — a young man blessed with a vision of the future and someone who can lie and evade the regimen easily — someone who questions the very basis of this colourless existence and strives with all the information he “receives” to bring his fellow humans into the real human world. This means he is a law breaker who needs to be hunted down and “released” to another world, which means he needs to be killed in cold blood before he infects the rest of the humanity with reality.

It’s a surreal kind of film which uses the black and white genre to perfection. Colour here is equated with the “real” human life and is kept at bay till, of course, the rogue receiver takes it upon himself to save the life of a baby and go to the edge of the world to bring back life as it should be.

It’s a happening journey through this lifeless existence and in that director Phillip Noyce does well to maintain the tenor of what “lifeless life” would mean. It is a movie that would be uncomfortable with anything really too emotional and that’s where the director keeps it.

For those who have read Lois Lawry’s award-winning bestseller young adult novel of the same name on which the film is based would see it has been tinkered with but would not mind that happening. It’s a slow one with aptly crafted thrill moments and would be liked by a few who can settle into that kind of a film. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer,  17 August, 2014