Whats with the magic memory wave?

The force field boundary must have just been in Jonas' imagination. Otherwise the premise is that there's a huge high-tech device out there with a lot of parts (it looked like regularly spaced pillars or repeaters every few metres) that doesn't need maintenance. And then the memory wave is triggered when something passes through the barrier. If you're OK with that happening, why build the thing in the first place? If you're not OK with that happening, how can there be a sled path across it? Why not some impassable barrier like a chasm or a moat or something? What happens when a bird goes through the force field?

WARNING!
Objects under T-shirt are larger than they appear!
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spoilers


I was hoping they would be ballsy and have Fiona killed (even though I knew she somehow wouldn't) as I couldn't see how she would be saved and then he skid through the "magic" towers and voila, instant Deus Ex Machina. The end was horrible to an extremely mediocre attempt at a deep or intelligent story. So many "universe" questions kept popping up as I watched it that I could only assume someone wrote it, not really expecting people all that clever to be watching it and hell, we need some more YA adaption, stat.

I had the same question until I came here and read some threads about the books. It never occurred to me that we did see a (blocked) telepathic society in the movie until I read the forums. This makes sense in many ways and explains a few things that would otherwise look like utter rubbish. Especially the ending an the concept of the memory wall. The moment I realized that things couldn't be as they looked, was when Jonas didn't see the tower in the snowy mountains that his map showed. I thought: probably it's just not there physically, it's a concept. Then he found the sled he saw in his memories shown to him by the Giver... I thought: hm...it seems he is seeing things he or others have seen before, how could that be? After that he could see the tower, the pulse happened and he found the Home.

If you just watch the movie without any knowledge of the books it is pretty hard to make any sense out of it. I doubt the books do explain everything in detail, but it seems that they are a lot about concepts, what makes us human, what makes us experience the world, what is good/bad...

I think what we see in the movie is that Jonas uses his incredible telepathic powers to awaken the memories of all people in his community (one of several as the map clearly shows) and it must be part of a long time plan. It is not up to his decision alone (otherwise he could have done it without leaving the community). There must be a greater concept, forcing the Keeper to leave to bring back the memories. And it is pretty obvious that bringing back the memories is intended, otherwise no one would have created such complex and insecure concepts like the Keeper/Giver, his hideout, the memory wall and so on. The idea is that this "locked away" society should get it's memories back one day. It is not an eternal concept for a utopia (that clearly would not work forever). We have to learn more things about the world that the community is imbeded into, to understand the concept behind this. I hope this movie will see sequels that may allow to answer some questions. As a stand alone I would deem it a failure although it was enjoyable up until the end.

And who services those machines? The entire memory thing didn't make much sense.