The Giver asks its audience to believe a community could erase pain, war, and choice, then hands that premise to a 97-minute film that never earns the weight of its own idea. Phillip Noyce directs from a script by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide, adapting Lois Lowry’s 1993 young adult novel. The film premiered on August 11, 2014, opened in the United States four days later, and landed a People’s Choice Award nomination for “Favorite Dramatic Movie.” It also holds a Metacritic score of 47, which is closer to the truth than any nomination.
Trailer, via Walden Media.
Jonas Learns He Will Be Receiver of Memory
The film opens after a calamity called “the Ruin.” Society has been reorganized to remove emotion, good or bad. Babies come through genetic engineering. Neuroleptic-like medications suppress strong emotions and sexual desire. One person, the Receiver of Memory, holds all memories of the old world so the rest of the community can live without them. The Receiver and his protégé are the only people who see in color, which has otherwise been eliminated to prevent envy.
Jonas is a 16-year-old whose best friends are Asher and Fiona. On graduation day he learns he will become the next Receiver of Memory. Jeff Bridges plays the Giver, his predecessor, who passes along memories of history. Brenton Thwaites plays Jonas, Odeya Rush plays Fiona, Cameron Monaghan plays Asher. Meryl Streep is the Chief Elder. Katie Holmes and Alexander Skarsgård are Mother and Father.
Gabriel Shares the Birthmark
Jonas learns about joy, pain, death, and love. He stops taking his daily injections — the ones that had stopped him from dreaming about Fiona — and starts to feel. He accidentally shares memories with a baby, Gabriel, brought home by his father. The two share a birthmark, the mark of a potential Receiver of Memory, and both see color.
The film’s best material lives here, but Noyce rushes it. Every memory Jonas receives is a montage. Every revelation lands as narration.
Rosemary Asked to Be Released
Jonas learns that leaving the community means being “Released to Elsewhere.” He discovers the phrase is a euphemism for euthanasia by injection, shown in a video of his father Releasing a twin. He also learns the Giver’s daughter, Rosemary, played by Taylor Swift, preceded him as Receiver. Her training left her so distraught that she asked to be released.
That is the film’s sharpest turn, and it arrives almost as an afterthought.
| Element | The Giver (2014) | Lowry’s 1993 novel |
|---|---|---|
| Runtime | 97 minutes | Full novel |
| Format | Feature film | Young adult book |
| Director | Phillip Noyce | — |
| Lead | Brenton Thwaites | Jonas |
The comparison is not kind. A novel can let a reader sit inside Jonas’s dawning horror. A 97-minute film has to choose what to cut, and The Giver cuts the interiority that made the book work.
Bridges and Streep Carry the Weight
Streep and Bridges are the two strongest assets on screen, and the film gives them little to do but stand opposite each other and speak in grave tones. Bridges has the harder job, carrying centuries of memory in a performance that mostly requires him to look tired. Streep’s Chief Elder is the film’s only real menace, and she gets maybe three scenes.
Thwaites is fine, which is the problem. Jonas should be a boy coming apart at the seams, and the script never lets him. Rush and Monaghan are given almost nothing. Swift’s Rosemary appears in flashback and registers as a curiosity rather than a tragedy.
The tagline reads “Search for truth. Find freedom.” The film searches for about an hour and a half and finds a chase scene.
The Community Never Puts Up a Fight
The Giver is not a disaster. The production is clean, the premise is durable, and the central question — whether a painless life is worth living — is exactly the question a young audience should be asked. But the film answers it before Jonas does. It stacks the deck so completely against the community that there is no real argument left to make.
What matters here is the gap between ambition and execution. The novel has lasted three decades because Lowry trusted her reader to feel the loss. The film does not trust anyone. It explains, it montages, it moves on. A 47 on Metacritic is not a verdict on the source material. It is a verdict on a movie that had everything it needed and used almost none of it.
The Giver is worth watching once, for Bridges and Streep, and for the reminder of how hard it is to film a book about the inside of a mind.
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