Phillip Noyce
The Giver

Lois Lowry (born 1937) is a literary actress who has dabbled over the years in various genres and activities such as freelance journalism and photography, and then specialized in what we can define as children's literature. In this category, we can include "The Giver," a novel published in 1993 and the first successful chapter of what later developed over the years into a full-fledged quartet. From the novel in 2014, an eponymous film was made, directed by Phillip Noyce and featuring a rich cast including, among others, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgard, and Katie Holmes. The leading role (which would be Jonas) is, however, entrusted to the young Brenton Thwaites, who would later be the same actor starring in the remake of "The Blue Lagoon," an indication that in itself would be enough to fear the worst for what in fact is not a film as bad as one might think.

Yet another chapter of a production that references the cornerstones "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "1984" by George Orwell, "The Giver" effectively offers a typical mixture of the themes addressed in these two great classics of science fiction as well as literature tout-court and introduces us to this black and white future where all emotions have been erased and where the solution to what can be ideological clashes or social claims is constituted in the denial of all past history and in the construction of an aseptic life model in which everyone is "selected" at birth, raised, and finally assigned to a specific role depending on his or her aptitudes or the needs of the community.

There are no sentimental or friendly relationships of any kind: the very families are merely founded on choice systems dictated by opportunities established from above and according to an immobile social model. Everything, however, changes when, upon reaching adulthood, the young Jonas (endowed with unspecified visionary abilities) is assigned a very special (unique) role, namely receiving from what is simply called the "giver" (Jeff Bridges) the memory of past times. The experience will immediately mark the boy who, becoming aware of the incredible and wonderful potential of the human emotional sphere, will begin to behave against the rules, until attracting the reactions of what is termed as the "council of elders," who, regretting their assignment, decide to hunt him down.

The good premise and well-directed development remain in the early stages, and the three young protagonists are good (the performances of the big names are quite useless instead...) and the technical intuition of black and white, although banal and unoriginal, is pleasant and works well. But the film then loses itself too early in a sequence of events that is too rapid and poorly told, culminating in a sloppy ending devoid of any "logical" content (I'm not talking about more or less plausible things, after all, it is a film with fantastic content): practically you don't understand what happens or simply nothing happens. Five more minutes and just a bit of inventiveness would have been enough to conclude it with dignity (Editor's note: As for the novel, it instead has an open ending that clearly refers to the next novel). But evidently, when the roles of director and screenwriter were assigned, a mistake was made. Things that also happen in the present without having to travel forward into a hypothetical future.