James Proclaims!

As much as I enjoy watching a movie, one aspect of cinema I often lament is just how long some films are. I often think that if a story needs more than 2 hours of screen time then it might be better served as a TV series. But even though the popularity of the boxset is beyond doubt in the era of streaming, film still seems to just about be regarded as the more prestigious medium. Which means that overly long films will probably continue to irk me for some time to come.

So when a movie comes in at a running time of around 97 minutes, like 2014’s The Giver, I’m generally pretty happy. So no-one was more surprised than me when my resulting takeaway from watching the film, was that it was a bit too short.

Not that I particularly wanted any more than the 97 minutes I got – in many respects I’d like to have all 97 minutes of my life back, because it really wasn’t very good. But I think the reason it wasn’t very good was because the story needed quite a lot more development on screen. Which would have needed the film to be longer.

I didn’t hate it. But when you’ve seen one dystopian vision of the future, you’ve pretty much seen them all. However, I suspect, given the acclaim for the source novel, The Giver might have had a little more to give. Given half a chance.

Score for Christmasishness

The film is set in a dystopian future where Christmas definitely is not a thing, but at the end of the movie, when the protagonist escapes the life he has always known to go to a place known as ‘Elsewhere’, he experiences a snowy sledge ride, which concludes outside a wooden house that is all lit up for the season. And we can hear some festive music in the background. So maybe Christmas is a thing after all.