The Giver: The Book or the Movie?

Dystopian novels have long been a favourite among bookworms the world over. Some of the sub-genre’s most celebrated works and some of my personal favourites include George Orwell’s 1984, Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and P.D. James’ The Children of Men, to name but a few. While arguably most of these novels are not directly targeted at children–although most can certainly be read and enjoyed by older children–one book that was clearly geared toward a young adult audience is Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel, The Giver.

The story follows a 12-year-old boy named Jonas who is chosen as the member of his local, isolated community who will take over the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who is tasked with remembering everything that happened before ‘Sameness’ began. Sameness is a system that was decided on by the residents where pain and suffering have been removed, with the side effect that emotions–or, at least, deeper emotions–have been eliminated. Everyone is assigned a role in the community that is decided during the Ceremony of Twelve, an event where all the 12-year-old residents are assigned a job that they will do for the rest of their life. While this may sound partly utopian–after all, getting rid of pain and suffering sounds like a good thing–we start to learn that things are not quite what they seem and that, because everything must have an opposite, removing negative things by definition means that the positive is no longer positive either.

When I read this book as a younger person, I remember being struck with how original the plot seemed. Imagine a society where we no longer had to worry about suffering and where most of our needs were met through collective effort. Equally, as the story unfolded, I remember realizing that, while it may seem ideal on the surface, we experience pain and suffering for a reason and it actually can serve a meaningful role in our lives. This highlights well the power of fiction and of this novel in particular: Books can introduce us to all sorts of new ideas and help us think about things we’ve never considered before. For a teenager, ideas like the ones presented here can lead to all sorts of curiosity and inquiry that may put one on a track not before considered.

Another interesting thing about this book is that the families in this town are not biological; instead, new-born babies, who have been genetically engineered, are assigned to parents deemed the best fit. Both children and parents have no choice in the matter yet act in ways that are similar to how ‘real’ families act. In addition, emotions within families are heavily regulated, and things such as lying or not sharing emotions are not allowed.

When our main character, Jonas, is bestowed with his new role of Receiver of Memory, he slowly realizes he is being isolated from his family and friends and is not allowed to tell them why or even communicate with them. In fact, because he is being trained to hold this special role in the community, he is allowed to break some of the rules. For instance, because he has to keep his role secret from others, lying is permitted for him, as is withholding his feelings. However, as he soon finds out, his role is one that is mentally taxing and one that he is not sure he is ready to handle, for it is he and he alone who must hold all the memories of the past. This includes war, the colours of the rainbow, snow, hunger, and many other things that residents of Jonas’s community are no longer familiar with. It’s here that we can start to see why what perhaps seemed like a utopia in the beginning is most certainly not. As we get to this point in the novel we are left to wonder what Jonas will do. Will he accept his role and continue on as the sole resident who keeps all of these memories both good and bad, or will he eschew it and somehow try to break free, escaping to a ‘normal’ life?

It should be noted that The Giver is the first novel in a series of four loosely-connected stories that take place within the same world as this one. Lowry followed this one up with Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004) and Son (2012). The latter of those three, by far the longest read, actually brings the first three books in the series together, piecing together elements of each into a satisfying overarching conclusion.

In 2014, director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, The Saint) adapted Lowry’s book into an hour and thirty-seven minute feature-length film featuring Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart, The Big Lebowski) as the titular Giver, Katie Holmes (Batman Begins, Pieces of April), Taylor Swift (Cats, Valentine’s Day) and Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada, Adaptation). The film takes place in the same world as the novel and follows Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) as he is chosen to be the new Receiver of Memory, a role that means he will be spending lots of time with the Giver, played by Jeff Bridges.

A few fine performances are given in this film by Bridges and Streep. Bridges, however, was clearly not breaking new ground here as the slightly stoned older guy thing has been done by him at least a few times before, most notably his character of The Dude in the The Big Lebowski. The transition from black-and-white to colour that the film utilizes, as well as a nice visual aesthetic made this movie pleasant to look at it and take in, especially when viewed on the big screen. Additionally, the source material is strong enough that certainly some of the overall concept of the book was accomplished in the film.

However, many things did appear to go a little wrong. For example, relative newcomer (at the time) Thwaites didn’t leave much of an impression in the lead role as Jonas. His lack of charisma is perhaps on display here, with the actor himself not exactly bringing anything fresh or exciting to the role. Same goes for the young actors Odeya Rush and Cameron Monaghan who played Jonas’ two best friends at the start of the film, Fiona and Asher, respectively. Neither left any type of lasting impression nor did they add much to the film itself. Taylor Swift, the country star turned pop goddess, didn’t quite leave us pining to see her in future films, making it unsurprising that she didn’t appear in another film for five years (Cats, the musical flop with an IMDb user score of 2.7–yikes!). A person with a high level of fame in another area such as music or sport like Ms. Swift can often find open doors into Hollywood if they so desire. However, like many before her, it may be better for her career if she just sticks to what she’s best at.

Regrettably, a further offense in this film is that some of the deeper ideas that were explored in the book by Lowry, such as those surrounding the suppression of emotion and the role of families, are not given as much weight here. Lowry allowed us to look at the value of working through emotions to show how complex it is to be a human and that, if emotions, good or bad, were to be taken away that we lose so much more of our humanity than we realize. Not being able to show or spend time on some of these issues is, of course, understandable because it runs the risk of having to resorting to a bland sort of exposition, a technique that can quickly grow old. But to not really dive into much of it at all was kind of a shame.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this movie is that it all feels a little too neat and shiny. The stakes never seem quite as high as they should, and everything seems to happen just as you would expect it to, implying that the nuances and explorations of the novel are missing in favour of the bare bones elements of the novel’s story. More time needed to be invested in understanding the consequences of such a place, where humanity is worse off for trying to rid itself of all the bad stuff.

While the movie is quite enjoyable in parts, and did churn out a few decent performances, it should be obvious at this point that I’m going to take the book over the movie. This was probably the easiest choice among all the book-versus-movie posts I’ve written about to date. The book is just so thought-provoking and acts as a sort of gateway to more complex, adult-themed science fiction novels such as the ones mentioned in the opening paragraph.

Final verdict: the book.

I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of Lowry’s excellent book. You can do so by clicking here. Also, have a look at the trailer for Noyce’s 2014 film starring Jeff Bridges below.