"The Giver" (2014) movie review

• IMDB

Jeff Bridges, "the Giver"

Meryl Streep, "Chief Elder"

Brenton hwaites, "Jonas" (Jonah--the prophet swallowed by the big fish!)

Katie Holmes, "Mother"

Odeya Rush, "Fiona"

Cameron Monaghan, "Asher"

Taylor Swift, "Rosemary"

Tradition

Great model of Tradition. We are all "receivers" of God's Word. We need to absorb the tradition and hand on to the next generation what was handed on to us.

The movie does not show Jonas reading any of the books in the library, nor discussing their meaning with "The Giver." Reading and understanding is hard work. The movie uses a commonplace of modern science-fiction as a shortcut for education: the Giver and the Receiver just join hands and have a "Vulcan mind-meld" (Star Trek; Paul; Harry Potter), with memories being transferred automatically and inerrantly from one person to the another.

It takes training, time, and effort to develop the virtues necessary to grasp the Tradition (the memories of Mother Church) and to become proficient in using her self-understanding to teach the mysteries of the faith to the next generation. "Knowledge maketh a bloody entrance."

I understand the necessity of the plot device as a shortcut to make the movie watchable, but I lament the reinforcement it gives to our desire to be passive learners. It is the kind of "education" that couch potatoes and internet surfers desire.

notes while watching the movie

Great demonstration of how sad the grey dystopia is. Awful!

"Balance." "With good there is always bad." YUCK!

Color, race, religion.

Piano--but no piano tuner!

The Giver: "Doubt all authority, even if you like the authority." Self-contradictory nonsense!

Noah's Ark! What if we could start all over with a purified family? Would we be happy?

What is the cause of our unhappiness? What is the true cure?

Jonas: "If you can't feel, what is the point?"

The Giver is more of a hero in this movie than in the novel? How did he have a daughter? Who was her mother? Unstated reality of the dystopia: no sex?

The movie's answer: "To love someone." We are designed for love. Love requires freedom. Without freedom, there can be no love, only a poor substitute. Mother: "Precision of language!" Love has no meaning in a world where sublimation, self-sacrifice, is achieved by a daily dose of drugs.

The Giver: "We could choose better." Christian existentialism.

Theme: "Life is good," even if it comes at the expense of allowing errors and sin. Theodicy.

Christmas carol, "Silent Night," played very, very softly at the end, sung by the Trapp Family Singers. Jonas: "I will not apologize for what I have done. This will lead us home."

In memoriam: Major Gray Lowry.