Film Review: Never Let Me Go (2010)

"Brother Could You Spare an Organ?"

By: Jordan Overstreet
Published: November 8, 2010

Human suffering is at its bleakest at the hands of novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who is known for his tales of heartbreak and unrequited love affairs. His depressing depictions of human relationships have seen the silver screen twice before in 1993’s “Remains of the Day” and 1995’s “The White Countess,” and his highly regarded dystopian novel Never Let Me Go gets the Hollywood treatment by Mark Romanek in a film version of the same name. Amidst the dreary English countryside, this coming of age story follows the lives of three British students, groomed to serve as “donors” to the population of this Orwellian society. While many science fiction films focus primarily on the special effects and gore of the genre, “Never Let Me Go” is, at its core, a love story, and a tragic one at that matter.

The film begins in the 1990’s in a sterile operating room as Cathy H. (Carey Mulligan, “An Education”) watches her friend and girlhood crush, Tommy (Andrew Garfield) being prepped for an operation; as the doctors spread iodine across his youthful stomach, Cathy recalls her first encounter with Tommy during their schooling at the Hailsham school in the 1960’s. Cathy, Tommy, along with Ruth (Keira Knightly), appear to be normal boarding school students until your eye begins to pick up on their academic curriculum. Dispersed between their arithmetic lesson and geography class, we see the students take part in obscure exercises (role playing real world activities such as visiting a café, taking medicine tablets before bedtime, purchasing damaged toys, etc). While these activities raise suspicion, Romanek makes sure that we do not get ahead of Cathy and the other children by presenting information from a child’s perspective. As the threesome ages, so does our perspective, and we begin to understand the injustice that is forced upon those created to be “donors.” Yet, the three do not age physically; rather their age is illustrated in the change that occurs in their dynamic; thus when Ruth catches Tommy’s eye and the two move from friends to lovers, fate seems to roll in and create a series of “unseen tides.”

To go into any more detail in regards to the plot would be a disservice to a future spectator and would seriously undermine Romanek’s vision, which has so carefully translated Ishiguro’s descriptive passage into live action. I must stress that “Never Let Me Go” is not a fast-paced drama, layered with heavy dialogue. Speaking is only used when necessary as means to highlight the unspoken things--a wayward glance, a body of a “donor” left to rot after her final donation, a tree covered in plastic bags. It is in these silent moments where Romanek is at his most brilliant, allowing mise en scen to dominate.

The final chapter of the film returns to the early 1990’s and takes the story in an odd direction, in hopes of explaining the purpose of Hailsham. While the final revelation, or “twist,” is predictable, Mulligan and Garfield project raw emotions and their responses to the unveiling of one of the many lies told to them at Hailsham is genuine. They breathe an air of authenticity to the trite realization and save the scene from melodrama. While Mulligan and Garfield will never be Liz and Dick, they compliment each other on screen. Taking an uncharacteristically supporting role, Knightly makes, perhaps, her best performance onscreen since “Pirates of the Caribbean.” She has abandoned her wilting ingénue type and adopted a real, manipulative femme fatale persona. Knightly was a nice surprise to find roaming the halls of Hailsham.

If the dystopian novel is a cultivation of our fears about a particular aspect of society, then George Orwell’s 1984 is an allusion to the growing fear of the spread of communism in the 1940’s, for he forces us to explore what our world would be like under the Iron Curtain; similarly, Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives capitalized on the growing Feminist movement of the 1970’s, leading women to ponder what would happen if the male sex did not go along with the new rights bestowed upon them. If this is the case, then “Never Let Me Go,” must be addressing the rising shortage for organ donors in the United States. While not as socially jarring as 1984 and The Stepford Wives, “Never Let Me Go” is an interesting exploration into our future and deserves to be more than just another film to add to the resumes of Mulligan, Garfield, and Knightly.

"Never Let Me Go." Directed by Mark Romanek; written for the screen by Alex Garland; produced by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightly, Andrew Garfield, and Charlotte Rampling. Rated R for some sexuality and nudity; run time 1 hour and 43 minutes.