The Giver, Hollywood English Film movie Review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * * 1/2
The Giver, Hollywood English Film movie Review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * * 1/2
English Film review
Johnson Thomas
Dysfunctional
rendering of Dystopia
<a href="http://www.mrqe.com/"><a
href="http://www.imdb.com/"><a
href="http://www.wikipedia.org/"><a
href="http://www.aasra.info/"><a
href="http://www..com/"><a href="http://www.thepioneer.com
efilmcritic.com/"><a
href="http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/"><a href="http://www.newyorktimes.com/"><a
href="http://www.timesofindia /"><a
href="http://www.tirbuneindia.com/"><a
href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/"><a
href="http://www.dnaindia.com/"></a></a></a></a></a></a></a></a></a></a></a></a><a
href="http://www.internationaltribune.com/"><a
href="http://www.efilmcritic.com/"></a></a>
<a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/"></a>
#Picks&Piques/SnippetFilmReviews/15thAug2014/JohnsonThomas
#SinghamReturns(Hindi) Rating: * * #RohitShetty #AjayDevgn #KareenaKapoorKhan #Reliance #UniversalPR #ParagDesai
#TheGiver( English) Rating:* * ½ Lois Lowry’s young-adult novel gets adapted
for the big screen but since there isn’t much of a back story for this
high-concept disturbia, and without the myth to validate it’s existence, feels
very much like an experience in suspended animation. You just wonder what all
the fuss was about? The long list of thespians enshrining this flick have
little to do other than look stoic and expressionless! #TopEntertainment
#SaileshPathak #MerylStreep #JeffBridges #KatyHolmes #TaylorSwift #PhillipNoyce
#AlexanderSkarsgaard
#Rege(Marathi) Rating: * * * ½ #MaheshManjrekar #PushkarShrotri #SantoshJuvekar #ArohWelankar
#AbhijitPanse #CineshorePR #MaheshLimaye #RavindraKarmarkar #ShivkumarParthasarathy
Film: The Giver
Cast: Meryl
Streep, Jeff
Bridges, Katie
Holmes, Alexander Skarsgård, Taylor
Swift, Odeya Rush, Cameron
Monaghan,Emma
Tremblay, Brenton Thwaites
Rating:
* * ½
Synopsis:A young man living in a future where complacency
is valued above all else discovers the sinister secrets that hold his
fragile society together after being selected to become the Receiver of Memory
in this adaptation of author Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal-winning young-adult
novel. Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgård, and
Katie Holmes star in a film from director Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence,
The Quiet American)
This cinematic
adaptation of Lois Lowry’s young adult novel is not as happening and busy as we
expected(considering that it is targeted at Young adults a la ‘hunger Games).
Proposing a conceptual world where everyone and everything is plagued by sameness, without financial
inequality but with a hierarchical system of power, Lowry set out to render the
world in a different color. In the film Director Phillip Noyce tries to
showcase that sentiment by using black and white and grey scale with the fruits
and outside world being the sole beneficiaries of color. But even that is not
to last long because…
Before we go
onto the film lets understand where Lowry’s novel came from. Originally published in 1993, around six years before “The Matrix,”
Lowry’s novel was designed on the basis of a patchwork of ideas borrowed from
Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Jack Finney and Ray Bradbury, some of the
foremost writers of modern allegory. So the new designer world in Lowry’s
conceptual Utopia is totalitarian in nature, and therefore peaceable. But that’s
not the case even though most of the inhabitants are made to forgo emotions in
order to live without attachments or prejudice. But the exceptions to the rule,
very few and far between, find themselves fighting the pre-programmed system from
within and outside and that creates ripples enough to categorise them as a
danger to the new world order.
The
community, whose residents had achieved an ideal of a classless, conflict-free
(and, seemingly race-free) society through the chemical suppression of emotion
and the erasure of all suspect stimuli (including books, colors, weather, and sex)
from the historical record, find their way of life threatened by the Receiver
of Memory’s penchant for creating waves when entrusted with the task of
preparing a chosen receptacle, Jonas( Brendan Thwaites) for the pivotal role in
the community. The Receiver of Memory, a grizzled community
elder (Jeff bridges)charged with keeping all human experience from time
immemorial catalogued inside his own understandably addled brain, is exempt
from the rigorous burning of the past.
Director
Phillip Noyce and screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide have stayed
reasonably faithful to the plot and characters but the wonder of the book and
the questions it raises, appears missing. “The Giver” envisaged the horror of a
society devoid of war, famine and other
forms of suffering and in the process taught us that man cannot control nature
when he himself is susceptible. It was a metaphor for any organized rhetoric
from the religious right or the bleeding heart espousing a society minus it’s
ills. In the film, that part is represented by the character played by Meryl
Streep, who orders the death of babies and elderly without batting an eyelid.
Jonas
, in the novel is 12 years old, while in the movie he is touching 16 and is
played by the 25-year-old Australian actor Brenton
Thwaites.
The
movie begins well enough, we are introduced to the community and its functional
“dwellings” where Jonas lives with his dutiful but distant parents (Alexander
Skarsgard and Katie
Holmes) and younger sister, Lily (Emma
Tremblay). Once he becomes the Reciever of piecemeal memories from the ageing
Reciever, he starts
rebelling. And it’s not action packed. It’s far more internalized and
eventually motif fed in a sea of color. There’s a hint of suspense but it’s not
exactly gripping.
Screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Robert
B. Weide grapple with the cinematic vision but without much success. There
are no thrills as such to speak of , and the treatment is so bland as to leave
you anemic.
Despite the modest budget(ny Hollywood
Standards)Production designer Ed Verreaux and costume designer Diana Cilliers
, manage togive the film a unique look which is further amplified by the low
contrast black and white treatment employed by Noyce. It did seem like it was the 1998
“Pleasantville,” in some respects.
As The
Receiver, Bridges manages to lend charisma but the performance is routine.
Thwaites, Streep, Sjaarsgard, Holmes, though in character, look like wraiths. The
way the experience pans out, it’s unaffecting to say the least. And that’s the
killer really!
Comments
Post a Comment