Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go is a film that is destined to slip under the radar of everyone, and it certainly did on mine. Asing its praises, but is more subtle in its accolades, than I take notice. And I grab it. Unfortunately that's only one step of the process, as having the movie and actually sitting down to watch it is another issue altogether. I was browsing my collection last night and saw the film there, and wondered: what is this? The brief description coined it as a science fiction film, which immediately grabs my attention. This, with a combination of some of the actors in it (Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield) and the fact that I at one point added it to my collection, was reason enough to hit play.
Not until I read a small blurb in a magazine or a forum post that doesn't quite

I was confused during the first act, but intrigued. The film opens with a few lines of text stating that in the 1950s, a medical breakthrough has allowed the human life expectancy to surpass 100 years. We start the film in the '60s, following a group of children in a school that seems a bit different than your typical school. They are encouraged to produce art, more than other subjects, and they seem to be isolated. Scary stories of what happens to children when they go beyond the fence keep everyone inside and guessing, almost living in a bit of fear if it wasn't for the fact that every child seems pretty happy. We're introduced to these stories through the addition of a new teacher to the schools ranks, who after a short time tells the students what their purpose is in life. She tells them to live their lives to the fullest with this knowledge, and is promptly fired from the school.

[Spoilers throughout the rest]

It's quite unsettling: the children are there to provide organ donations as they enter adulthood, and their own life expectancy is about thirty years. Typically they make two or three donations, at which point they complete. The child actors they got here do a brilliant job - apparently they would watch their adult counterparts act, and the adults could model their own acting based on the children. This method comes through brilliantly on screen, as we transition into their late teens/early twenties when the children are now living in The Cottages and we're introduced to our adult actors for the first time. There is a love triangle between Kathy (Mulligan), Tommy (Garfield) and Ruth (Knightley) that begins innocently in childhood and becomes more complex when we jump ahead.

Dejected, Kathy seems to be the odd one out as she follows her own path of becoming a carer - one of the organ donators who accepts the task of consoling other donors as they pass through to completion. She doesn't see the other two for ten years, where the film advances to once more. She then runs into Ruth again, who has just gone through two donations. Her time is nearly up. And so is Tommy's.

I've spent a bit of time basically spoiling the film through plot reveal, but you must understand that there is much more going on here. This isn't about the big reveal in the end, it's about the journey getting there. While this may be a science fiction film, it is a better human story about love, and the journey that we all take to accept our own mortality. This is what really got to me: we have three characters dealing with their fate in their own unique ways. It is something that I have thought about a lot over the past few years, and struggled with. Kathy has accepted her role, and knows that she will complete soon. She understands the bigger picture here: that they are all clones bred for organ harvesting (sounds quite grim, doesn't it?) and has a certain melancholy about the subject. She doesn't look back at her younger romance, she doesn't try to defer the inevitable. But she won't deny them, either. The other two deal with it in their own way, representative of my own feelings: anger, resentment, sadness, acceptance.

It's also difficult not to draw comparisons to The Island, a 2005 explosion fest starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. The first half of that film was very interesting, before it devolved into a generic, extended action chase sequence with enough effects and explosions to numb yourself. The beginning held promise on the ethics of cloning, harvesting parts for the super rich and living in a false, controlled society. Never Let Me Go is set in the real world, where these characters know their purpose and are (for the most part) accepting of it. I could only imagine the rest of society's feelings on these, of which we don't spend much time on at all. The focus is on the three love interests and their story. Suffice to say, the more personal, intimate story wins out here, although both have their place.

Never Let Me Go also advances into the question on whether these people have souls. This is why they are encouraged to produce art as children, and its this creation of art that Tommy undertakes to defer his own donations: if he can produce art that definitively shows that he has a soul, he may be spared. Although the film doesn't address it specifically, we, the audience, know that they do. It's not about art, it's about who they are as people. They act the same way we do, they feel the same way. These clones are equals, if not more. It's summed up beautifully in the last lines of the film, as Kathy ponders whether her fate is any different than those who receive the donations.

Beautifully acted, and wonderfully shot, I would have to recommend to anyone.