I read a lot of books and admittedly it probably all started back in the 5th grade when I had to read The Giver for a book report. It was a good book. I enjoyed it and other books like it. The dystopian future that authors created was interesting to me. When I heard they were creating a movie based on the book I was a little upset. Movies based on books are rarely good. For every "Fight Club" there's an "I, Robot." I put it off for a while, but I finally bit down and watched the movie.For those of you don't know The Giver is the first book in a 4 part series. It covers the story of Jonas. A boy in a community that is ruled by a group of unseen elders. They've removed almost everything. Families aren't created through love, but random selection. The climate is controlled and there is no snow or rain. There is no war, no race, no culture. Everyone wears the same hairstyles. It's perfect from the outside. People know nothing of the past. The only one that does is The Receiver, the person who carries memories of the past. Upon the selection of a new Receiver the old Receiver becomes The Giver. Old people and undesirable people are released to Elsewhere. That's the basics of The Giver.
I'm a fan of the way the Sin City movies are made in black and white with small color highlights. The giver does something different. The movie starts in complete black and white. As Jonas gains memories more color is added to the film until it's just full of vibrant colors. It's just a really cool contrast and displays growth. Visuals in general were really good in this. I know it doesn't sound like a hard task to create a world where everything looks the same and it may not be, but they did it really well. Some films go ahead and make the main characters look special with some kind of charm or adjustment, not here. They all look alike.
My favorite part to this movie is they didn't try to make it into an action movie. The actions scenes that happened, actually happened in the movie. There were no added car chases, no shoot outs. The film stuck to the source material for the most part. There were parts where the film expanded on things that didn't happen in the book. It didn't create new aspects, simply expanded on the ones that were already there.
The actors outside of Jonas and The Giver were extremely dull. That usually would be an insult but it's a compliment. None of the characters were doing things that would be considered out of the ordinary. There's barely any music in the film. That makes sense when you consider music wasn't even introduced to most of the characters until the end. Instead the films soundtrack is made up of mostly ambient sounds.I enjoyed The Giver because it didn't take the typical movie route and try to spice up the source material. It didn't force in a sex scene or anything like that. It was just beautifully, depressing depiction of a dystopian society with an ending that shines a light on a dark spot of the world. A lot of critics complained that The Giver was bad because it stuck to closely to the source. But that's what makes it great. It's a movie that doesn't conform based on a book about a child who refuses to conform. By not conforming to the Hollywood standard of making everything larger than life it became a representation of Jonas. That statement was pointless. What I'm saying is, no matter how bad you heard this movie is. You should still watch it.
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