The Giver ***
Dir: Phillip Noyce. With: Brenton Thwaites, Jeff
Bridges, Meryl Streep. 97 mins. Cert: 12A
This week’s young
adult contender reroutes Divergent
via Pleasantville. In a monochrome
post-apocalyptic community arranged along comfortingly bland lines by nannying
elder Meryl Streep, odd-teen-out Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) lands an
apprenticeship with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), a maverick historian-cum-psychic
deployed to filter out more colourful memories of the old world and thus keep
citizens in blissful ignorance. Jonas’s quest to broach the city limit clunkily
labelled “The Boundary of Memory” rushes through terrain The Truman Show explored in greater emotional and philosophical
depth, yet much of Phillip Noyce’s film has been conceived with a comparable
artistry and attentiveness: one resplendent Turneresque skyline here is more
vivid than a half-dozen concrete-grey Hunger Games. It makes for one of this overcrowded field’s stronger entries,
refusing to redact entirely the baby-slaying weirdness that permits Lois
Lowry’s source novel its multiplicity of grown-up readings: even the designated
terminology of “Giver” and “Receiver” carries certain properly adult
connotations.
The Giver opens in cinemas nationwide today.
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