Meryl Streep is Chilling in ‘The Giver’

John Scura

“When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong,” is the chilling line delivered by Meryl Streep in this month’s film release from The Weinstein Company, The Giver, in which she portrays the ice cold Chief Elder who rules a futuristic dystopian society in which there is no conflict, racism. or sickness, and every person has a specific role. The film overall is a coming of age story in which Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) reacts to this strictly engineered society where there are no memories, no hunger, no suffering, and no violence. There is also no freedom or individuality. Everyone lives in a communal sameness with identical homes, identical clothes, and even identical family structures.

Where life seems perfect and everything is controlled by Elders (such as Meryl Streep’s character), Jonas is assigned to spend time with a man known as The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the keeper of the entire society’s memories, for the purpose of becoming the new receiver of their history. The Giver reveals humanity’s dark secrets while sharing how this utopian society was formed and survives. The families are coordinated by a Council of Elders who match husbands and wives and are headed by Ms. Streep’s character. Each couple is permitted to raise two children, a boy and a girl, which are conceived by birth mothers and not by the couple. Once the children become adults, the family unit ceases and the offspring do not remember their “parents.”

Adapted from the popular 1993 novel by Lois Lowry, The Giver is the end result of a 20-year effort by actor Jeff Bridges, who holds the additional title of producer on the film. He first became aware of it when his then high school-aged daughter raved about the book to him. “I was looking for some material in which to direct my father, Lloyd Bridges,” he recalls. “I also wanted to make a movie that my kids could watch at the time.” The project was sidetracked when Warner Brothers bought the book rights, and with the passing of his father, Bridges decided to play the role himself when the rights to the story were bought by The Weinstein Company.

The film was shot in Cape Town, South Africa, and Streep found the experience memorable. “I’d never been there before,” she says. “I’d been to Kenya, where we made Out of Africa, I lived there for six months and that was astonishing. It was really a wonderful time,” she remembers of the pivotal era in their history. “We were there in early December, and it was when [Nelson] Mandela died. So it was interesting to be there when all the molecules shifted in Cape Town. It really did. You could feel it, a huge combination of grief and exultation. He was such a singular figure, amazing man.”

Streep approaches acting with the same passion and objectivity. When notified of her nomination for yet another award, she claims that it always surprises her. “I’m so old news,” she says, but in her respected career Streep has won a total of 119 awards, including three Oscars and 18 nominations, more than any other actor in history. “It wasn’t the career I chose,” she insists. “The career I chose was as a drama major at Yale when I played a ninety–year–old woman. Then I played a really fat person. I played a lot of different things and that’s how I thought I loved to wrangle my talent, my need to express myself. I never thought I was somebody that would be on the cover of magazines wearing fashions. It’s not me, but that’s what movie stardom entails.”

What really drives Meryl Streep to keep acting despite the uncomfortable mantle of stardom? “It’s very exhilarating to step into somebody else’s shoes,” she explains. “It’s very humbling to imagine somebody else’s life and pain. It’s my drug.”

The Giver opens in theaters on August 15.