Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Giver’ (2014)

Aug 14, 2014

The Weinstein Company

The Weinstein Company

Many people refer to their homeland as the mother country. Those people didn’t know The Chief Elder, a matriarch as stern as they come who’s running the show in the country depicted in The Giver.

Directed by Philip Noyce and based on the YA book by Lois Lowry, The Giver essentially rips in half the mother archetype, tied to the Moon-Lunar principle of nurturing, feelings and emotion.

On one end of the spectrum is The Elder (Meryl Streep), an elegant feminine energy who has taken matters into her own tribal hands after an apocalyptic event wreaked havoc on the place.

To keep the denizens free from the pain of remembering horrors since the beginning of time, the territory is run as a seemingly benevolent dictatorship. The tyrannical component comes from its slew of Saturnine elements: rules, organization, precision, firmness and, when necessary, punishment. With her strong Saturnine physical appearance, The Elder is the Mother who oversees operations – daily life is a mind-numbing sameness – with the crispness of Cronos ready to devour his own children.

At the other end of the spectrum is The Giver (Jeff Bridges), the community’s keeper of memories – the bad stuff, like war, as well as the good stuff, such as appealing emotions of joy, love and family – which have now been denied the populace. He, too, represents the Moon, which values giving. His inability to deliver is hampered by the community’s Saturnine regulations.

Both The Elder and The Giver represent two sides of the same archetypal coin. The individual who’ll soon radically shake up the status quo is Jonas (Brenton Thwaites). He’s just graduated from high school and, like two of his close friends – Fiona (Odeya Rush) and Asher (Cameron Monaghan) – has been assigned a position in the community. Jonas will succeed The Giver and become the new keeper of memories. Hint: Jonas, a more Uranian Rebel of a Mother, would rather share. Uh-oh.

Will the community, with its artificial Moon-like caring construct – women are assigned separate roles to birth children who are then deposited with assigned Fathers (Alexander Skarsgård) and Mothers (Katie Holmes) – hold up once Jonas’ wheels start turning? And what will be the fate of the infant Gabriel who seems destined to become the archetypal Divine Child?

The Giver questions whether to introduce into an unaware population a treasure chest that doubles at Pandora’s box. Tough job, being a Mom.

Archetype: Mother, Elder Feminine, Dictator

Astrology Archetype: ☽ ♄ (Moon, Saturn)

Facebook Twitter Email

Recent Posts

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Gone Girl’ (2022)

Containers abound in Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher and based on the popular novel by Gillian Flynn, who wrote the screenplay. There are envelopes, which hold the clues for the treasure hunt Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) has prepared for her husband Nick...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Get On Up’ (2014)

It’s all there. The riffs, the shoes that swivel maniacally as though greased, the slurrified words, the clipped throaty growls. But Tate Taylor’s Get On Up, the biopic of soul-funk innovator and icon James Brown, ups the ante by letting us see the legend living out...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Congress’ (2014)

Can the veil that separates Saturnine corporeal reality from the transcendent Neptunian realm actually be a cruel trick devised by Hollywood moguls? Yes, indeed, and it’s the premise of Ari Folman’s part live-action, part animated film The Congress, loosely based on...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Calvary’ (2014)

Everyone has a cross to bear. But a parish priest tending his flock in Ireland’s County Sligo has really gotten more than his share in Calvary, a movie that addresses archetypal Pluto issues of power, abandonment and revenge, as well as Neptune themes of sacrifice and...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Lucy’ (2014)

Luc Besson’s new sci-fi thriller Lucy could easily have been titled Mercury in Hyperdrive, a breathless tale about the archetype that rules thought and communication gone cinematically ballistic. Bigger, faster and stronger describe the new-and-improved mental...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014)

The grim espionage business relies, for its success, on Neptunian deception and Plutonic penetration of secrets. The most clever master spies throw a third archetype into the mix: the Saturnine User, who’ll exploit the captured by making them spy on their own people...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ (2014)

If art is the beautiful lie, can love also be ushered into existence by duplicity? That’s the question at the center of Magic in the Moonlight, a movie inspired by early 20th century Europe’s fascination with spiritualism, seances and communicating with the dead....

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘I Origins’ (2014)

The old adage – that the eyes are the gateway to the soul – gets all scienced up in I Origins, a movie that asks whether Saturnine, data-driven science trumps knowledge that bypasses logic. Directed and written by Mike Cahill, the movie’s core question – Can reality...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ (2014)

In the annals of history, many liberators of the oppressed freed their citizenry only to become tyrants themselves. It’s this age old cycle of restrictive Saturn sidling up to revolutionary Uranus – a rhythm that topples and rebuilds civilizations – that’s at the core...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Boyhood’ (2014)

For most of us, life is way too busy to allow for keen observations of minute gradations of growth and blossoming of family members, friends and other significant individuals who help grace our time on the planet. Perhaps it’s for this reason – our lack of attention...

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Tammy’ (2014)

Mention the word “Tammy” and “movies” in the same breath and, with any luck, the visuals that come to mind center on Debbie Reynolds’ vocal rendition of the song “Tammy,” put to exquisite use by Terence Davies in his The Long Day Closes (1992). Reynolds’ tune is that...

Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Happy Christmas’ (2014)

As an exploration of the gifts and curses of creative vision, nothing beats the short, snappy Happy Christmas. Written and directed by Joe Swanberg, the movie takes a hard look at what happens when archetypal Neptune – whose bailiwick is artistic inspiration, music,...

Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Venus in Fur’ (2014)

If you couldn’t get enough of Jack Baker’s (Jeff Bridges) cinematic jaw-drop in The Fabulous Baker Boys, as soon as seemingly tone-deaf loser and gum-snapping chanteuse Suzie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) starts to soulfully warble her heart out and blow him away,...

Astrology: Film: Review: ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ (2014)

Is every critter, human or otherwise, trainable? And, because training elevates the game and aptitude of the instructed, does the core essence of tutored trainees remain the same? Those questions – as well as Saturnine boundary issues about whether to label entities...

Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Rover’ (2014)

Set in a post-apocalyptic world in the Australian Outback, The Rover is a Saturnine story about two archetypal loners, each having suffered a huge personal loss that needs to be rectified in a land where procedural justice is a thing of the past. Written and directed...

Astrology: Film: Review: ‘22 Jump Street’ (2014)

Sequels are a dicey business, where a flavor too similar to the original can breed audience contempt. But in 22 Jump Street, co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller playfully make replication their creative launching pad. Lovable cops Jenko (Channing Tatum) and...