The Giver Movie, A Takedown
The 2014 film was a complete and utter failure
One of my favorite childhood books was The Giver by Lois Lowry. It follows Jonas, a child in a distant future who lives in a community that is completely controlled to ensure “sameness”.
The book is a beautiful dystopian novel that makes one question what freedoms we would give up if it meant safety and stability. Some time in “the way” back the original council of elders decided on sameness. They did away with color and emotion, including sexual feelings along with all that entails (read: no sex here), choice, and even terrain variation (they don’t know what a hill is). There are no animals aside from fish, they think things like elephants and hippos are mythical creatures for children.
When Jonas is assigned his lifetime vocation he is given a job just one other person alive has. That is to become “The Receiver of Memory”. The current Receiver now becomes “The Giver”, as he will give the memories to Jonas. Jonas receives the memories of society before sameness, he experiences all of the joy and all of the pain. Once Jonas realizes what life could be, and what life has been in the past, he becomes enraged with his so-called utopia and decides to take a stand.
The Giver novel is a coming-of-age tale, it’s a critical look at controlling governments, and what value free will has. The film The Giver is an hour-and-a-half-long dumpster fire with none of the nuance or thought-provoking heart the novel embodies.
Let’s dissect this movie like that interesting kid in high school biology class, ruthlessly. As I stated, the members of the community don’t experience color. Jonas sees color in just quick, fraction-of-a-second intervals and he does not understand what is happening because he has no concept of color.
The first color he experiences is red in the shimmer of an apple, then again in his friend Fiona’s hair. The movie opens with Jonas looking up at the trees and the sky and seeing multiple colors, none of which are red. He sees green in the trees and blue from the sky. I do not understand why people do this when they create movies. This is an important detail in the book. Why change it for the film when it does not build your plot at all? They start on this crummy foot and it does not get better for the entire duration of the film.
The movie strays so far from the book that it is almost an entirely different concept altogether. From the fact that Jonas should have blue eyes, but is one of the only characters without blue eyes, to the fact that they have the community virtually impossible to leave because it is floating in the sky, which is nothing like the community in the book. They also have major plot differences, such as the extreme behavior of the Chief Elder, or the fact that for some reason they have bodyguards and weapons, even though there is no violence whatsoever.
These people are robotic in the book. They have almost no emotion, it’s your Aunt on Xanax, jovial enough, but zoned out, living on autopilot. They do not accomplish this in the film, Jonas and his friends all have a playful manner together, they crack jokes, and make both Fiona and Asher, Jonas’s friends have extreme feelings towards the end of the film. It negates the completely alien feeling of the community for Jonas once he is no longer medicated.
The cast is very well put together, but they missed some big marks. Jonas needs to have blue eyes. In the books, people with special abilities have blue eyes. It is not common in the community and signifies that he is special. This subtle but important aspect of The Giver and its subsequent books is important. It feels like a middle finger at the fans to have it ignored when making this movie.
Why can’t filmmakers stay faithful to a book when adapting that book to film? Especially with something as easily fixed as eye color, does production not know what contacts are? This detail really sticks in my craw because it is obvious the writer of the film didn’t value the details of the novel.
Jeff Bridges, who plays The Giver is an excellent choice. It’s especially heartstring-pulling when you learn that he had been trying to make the film since the 90s. He wanted his father in the role, but his father passed away in 1998.
The rights to the movie passed from hand to hand and got stuck in 2007. This is a huge part of the clunky mess that finally hit our screens, it passed through over a decade of rewrites and limbo and seems to have been a “just get it out there” film in the end. I would have preferred the movie never come out than the infantilized and sanitized story they had the nerve to serve us.
I reread the book and watched the movie within a day of each other for this article, and I wrote a long list with all of the ridiculous differences they made in the movie that removed impact from the message.
The ending is particularly aggravating, they change the ending to give it the Hollywood treatment. It is shallow and meaningless. The nuance and thought provocation from the book are missing entirely and filled with cheap shots meant to elicit emotion. I’ve been annoyed for a decade. I’m all for love, love is great, but love is not the main purpose of the story, freedom is, choice is, and truth is.
I love books, and I love films, and I know not everything can make it from book to movie, but the majority of a book should be in the film, this movie does not deliver. It changes details simply because the filmmakers aren’t aware of them, or worse, just didn’t care. They change the fundamental way the story is told, the rules of the community, the reason for this new-age community, and the depth of the story.
Dear filmmakers, if you’re going to take a beloved YA novel and make it a movie maybe try reading it first.
I will note that when asked on GoodReads how Lois Lowry felt about all the changes in the movie she responded:
“A movie can never be the same as a book. The Giver, in particular, is an introspective book; much of it takes place inside Jonas’s head. They had to add visual action. I think they did a good job, within that context, of maintaining the integrity of the book.”
This sounds like a passive way of saying “It is what it is”, and it’s not great. I read that Jeff Bridges also had a worry about some of the changes being made, but was onboard at the time of filming, likely story Walden Media.
The issue with recreating something beloved is that you must also love and respect the thing to do it justice. The creators of The Giver did no such thing. From the unnecessary and inaccurate plot given to Meryl Streep’s Chief Elder character to the fact that most of the book happens very rushed in the first half of the film, and the second half of the film is left meandering and virtually meaningless made-up nonsense for some emotional punch that has the strength of a baby.
One change I am thankful for is that in the book The Giver character gives Jonas memories by having him strip off his tunic and lay face down on the bed, The Giver then places his hands on Jonas’s back and transfers the memories that way. This part of the story was always a little uncomfortable to me, in the movie they changed it to The Giver placing his hands on Jonas’s, which gets the point across without the slightly creepy feel the book had.
I kept track of all of the changes I could clock while watching, from the color storyline being wrong to the fact that The Giver never shares music with Jonas because he wants to hold onto those memories, and everything in between. I count about sixty inaccuracies, which is almost one a minute for this ninety-seven-minute shitshow.
This film deserves a remake, there are four books in this series, and this movie did no justice to the heart and meaning of the story. I want a redo, but with a film that cost $25 million to make and only generated $67 million, it is unlikely.
I urge you to take four to six hours to read the book, it’s a quick read perfect for all ages, I first read the book at ten years old, and now, at thirty-one, I am championing it once again. I think it speaks volumes to note that this is a novel often on the “banned books” list. Challenge the system! Read this book, do not watch this movie, and thank me later.
The film ends with a frame that says “Based on the book by Lois Lowry”, which I snorted at and responded, “Yeah, sure.”
Don’t waste your time with this movie, convince Spielberg to remake it, I trust him to do it justice.
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