The Giver: Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
A young man named Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community’s memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community’s secret past. With this newfound power of knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined – a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all – a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before.
Right from the start this film reminded me like a mix between Pleasantville and Divergent with the world being in black and white and the way it took place in a world where everyone everything was in a controlled state. That’s where the similarities stop though. What we have is a film that has a unique premise and causes you to ask plenty of philosophical questions about the world. The aspect of ONE person becoming “the giver” is crazy to me though because the thought of a person gaining all of that knowledge of the world would have to be emotionally painful for someone to the point of insanity I would think. I thought everyone gave really solid performances, especially Bridges and Thwaites but my only qualm with the film was that it felt too short. The film clocks in at about 90 minutes but after watching it I felt like it could’ve been expanded more to incorporate more of an in depth explanation of the world they live in or more build up to Jonas’ realization. Even with that though I thought this was a great movie with a thought provoking theme that will leave you satisfied with it’s overall message.
Special Features:
Highlights from the Original Script Reading Featuring Lloyd Bridges – A 40 minute table read of the film that is quite interesting seeing as it was from almost 20 years ago.
Making The Giver: From Page to Screen – A fantastic feature that looks at what it took to get the book made into a film and how they were able to breathe life into the characters and story.
Extended Scene – A pretty good 10 minute scene.
Press Conference with Filmmakers & Cast – A very big Q&A panel with the entire cast that was very interesting.
“Ordinary Human” Feature with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder – Tedder talks a bit about what it was like to contribute to the soundtrack.
Author Lois Lowry on The Giver – She gives her thoughts on the theme of the story and what she would of done differently with her original work.
