A humanity problem sits at the heart of my dissatisfaction with
the current string of dystopian YA films. This doesn’t really surprise
me. By their nature dystopic visions extend contemporary concerns to
their logical extreme. When Ray Bradbury is concerned that American
culture is losing touch with the traditional literary canon he writes Fahrenheit 451. Anxieties about the dehumanizing effects of post-industrial capitalism fuel The Hunger Games, and similar concerns about the expansion of Marxism give rise to Atlas Shrugged
(a more appropriately ambivalent gesture for such a deeply needless
film cannot be imagined).
In order for the metaphor to function, however, individuals must become embodiments of the tropes of the genre: detached leaders equating the continued functioning of the system to the common good, energetic young heroes relying on the absolute moral and intellectual certainty of youth to challenge the structure, and cogs/pawns/thralls who have a moment of moral awakening in the wake of the hero’s stand against the power. The problem here is that if everyone is a type, it leaves very little room for them to be people. Allegory has a way of destroying myth.
The Giver is not immune to this problem. Throughout the film there are montages of images from life before the development of the communities where the film takes place that are designed to show the fullness of the human experience: sailing, dancing, wedding, praying, etc. These images might as well come out of an Apple commercial. I laughed out loud several times, not because the montage was ridiculous (which it was), but that even in its ridiculous—and somewhat exploitive—use of images the audience is meant to relate to, it far outpaces the rest of the film in conveying a sense of humanity. Good actors and actresses are given material contrived that I am not sure the product would have noticeably suffered if Meryl Streep and Alexander Skarsgard were replaced with promotional cardboard cutouts.
And yet…The Giver is a better film than any of the other YA dystopias of the last several years. When these movies work at all, as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire does, it is because a given performance gives us in the audience something more than what is in the script. There is a reckless electricity in that film when Jennifer Lawrence and Phillip Seymour Hoffman dance, because both performers come to the moment with a fullness of human feeling. Jeff Bridges does something similar here, in a performance that Grantland’s Wesley Morris described as “a car radiator that needs water.” With all due respect to Mr. Morris (who is my favorite contemporary film critic by a sizeable margin), I have to disagree. Bridges invests the titular “Giver” with a grubby grandeur that raises him out of the world he resides in. His character is the repository of human memory, the personification of a collective unconscious teeming with things beautiful and awful, and as a result he sees the world in ways unknown to others. I am reminded of the conclusion of the D.C. Comics masterpiece All-Star Superman, in which Lex Luthor is, for a moment, able to see the world as Superman sees it, and weeps because of its audacious beauty. And, like Superman, Bridges’ character must bear the terrific burden that comes with such consciousness. At times it seems as if the weight of the burden will snap him in two.
Sure, the plot swerves irresponsibly into obligatory set pieces, and yes, as the action ramps up there are expository leaps that make no sense, and of course, the ending doesn’t make a ton of sense. At a certain level of movie-viewing, none of that matters. Some movies wash over you and leave no trace behind. As visually impressive as Gravity was, for instance, I think about it less with each passing day. I haven’t thought of the first Hunger Games movie since the moment I left the theater. But days have passed and when I close my eyes I still see The Giver, standing at the window of his cliff-side home, staring out over the mists that veil the lands of Elsewhere bearing all the pains and joys of the people. That is a moment of mythic effect, and I would sit through a dozen movies much worse than The Giver in order to find it.
Rating: feels somehow irrelevant to the experience I just described…let’s call it 2/4?
This content appeared originally at Pop, Shop, and Troll
In order for the metaphor to function, however, individuals must become embodiments of the tropes of the genre: detached leaders equating the continued functioning of the system to the common good, energetic young heroes relying on the absolute moral and intellectual certainty of youth to challenge the structure, and cogs/pawns/thralls who have a moment of moral awakening in the wake of the hero’s stand against the power. The problem here is that if everyone is a type, it leaves very little room for them to be people. Allegory has a way of destroying myth.
The Giver is not immune to this problem. Throughout the film there are montages of images from life before the development of the communities where the film takes place that are designed to show the fullness of the human experience: sailing, dancing, wedding, praying, etc. These images might as well come out of an Apple commercial. I laughed out loud several times, not because the montage was ridiculous (which it was), but that even in its ridiculous—and somewhat exploitive—use of images the audience is meant to relate to, it far outpaces the rest of the film in conveying a sense of humanity. Good actors and actresses are given material contrived that I am not sure the product would have noticeably suffered if Meryl Streep and Alexander Skarsgard were replaced with promotional cardboard cutouts.
And yet…The Giver is a better film than any of the other YA dystopias of the last several years. When these movies work at all, as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire does, it is because a given performance gives us in the audience something more than what is in the script. There is a reckless electricity in that film when Jennifer Lawrence and Phillip Seymour Hoffman dance, because both performers come to the moment with a fullness of human feeling. Jeff Bridges does something similar here, in a performance that Grantland’s Wesley Morris described as “a car radiator that needs water.” With all due respect to Mr. Morris (who is my favorite contemporary film critic by a sizeable margin), I have to disagree. Bridges invests the titular “Giver” with a grubby grandeur that raises him out of the world he resides in. His character is the repository of human memory, the personification of a collective unconscious teeming with things beautiful and awful, and as a result he sees the world in ways unknown to others. I am reminded of the conclusion of the D.C. Comics masterpiece All-Star Superman, in which Lex Luthor is, for a moment, able to see the world as Superman sees it, and weeps because of its audacious beauty. And, like Superman, Bridges’ character must bear the terrific burden that comes with such consciousness. At times it seems as if the weight of the burden will snap him in two.
Sure, the plot swerves irresponsibly into obligatory set pieces, and yes, as the action ramps up there are expository leaps that make no sense, and of course, the ending doesn’t make a ton of sense. At a certain level of movie-viewing, none of that matters. Some movies wash over you and leave no trace behind. As visually impressive as Gravity was, for instance, I think about it less with each passing day. I haven’t thought of the first Hunger Games movie since the moment I left the theater. But days have passed and when I close my eyes I still see The Giver, standing at the window of his cliff-side home, staring out over the mists that veil the lands of Elsewhere bearing all the pains and joys of the people. That is a moment of mythic effect, and I would sit through a dozen movies much worse than The Giver in order to find it.
Rating: feels somehow irrelevant to the experience I just described…let’s call it 2/4?
This content appeared originally at Pop, Shop, and Troll
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