‘Never Let Me Go’: A film review

I‘d been anticipating director Mark Romanek’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s award winning dystopian novel Never Let Me Go for months before it got a wide enough release to reach Austin. I first read about the film at N. Alexander’s blog The Speculative Scotsman, and was sufficiently interested to keep my eyes and ears open for this film. But it wasn’t until I saw the trailer that a strong desire to see the film took hold of me. It became one of my most anticipated films this year--I thought the trailer screamed Oscar. 

I went out and bought the book, but held off on reading it with no clear purpose as to why. One would spoil the other inevitably, so it really didn’t matter which one I picked. For whatever reason, though, I held off in favor of the film.

And waited.

Finally, last Sunday Kelley and I decided to top off our anniversary weekend celebration by heading over to The Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar for our screening of Never Let Me Go. Let me just say that it was well worth the wait.

Now, I’ve struggled with the idea of reviewing this film for a week because of the spoiler factor. It’s very difficult, specifically with this movie, to say anything about it without ruining the revelation of the central plot line. So in the interest of preserving potential viewers’ enjoyment of the film, I have decided to give a very ambiguous review. I hope you guys will understand and appreciate it this when you get around to seeing it.

Never Let Me Go is, at its heart, a love story set in a dystopian world where ethics questions involving the human rights of the few have been all but overlooked in favor of the preservation of the many.  The film has been compared, favorably, to Children of Men and Fahrenheit 451, and I would say that it’s a pretty decent comparison, but only in the most general sense. Never Let Me Go follows the lives of three children (played brilliantly by Isobel Meikle-Small, Ella Purnell, and Charlie Rowe)  who are students at the idyllic English boarding school of Hailsham as they grow up (played equally well as adults by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield) and learn to cope with the harsh realities of their unusual world and the basic themes of love,  jealousy, loneliness, and time. 

Carey Mulligan (pictured left), as the adult Kathy H., emotes voluminously and devastatingly with the most subtle expressions. A slightly furrowed brow or an eerily blank stare, that is somehow not blank, reveal worlds of joy, hurt, hope, and, sorrow. Mulligan is a brilliant actress, and I hope, hope she gets an Oscar nod. At least. 

Never Let Me Go is crushing in its ability to transcend the basic, underlying science fiction theme that fuels the machine of the story as it tugs relentlessly at the viewer’s heart strings. Mark Romanek and cinematographer Adam Kimmel’s vision of Ishiguro’s dystopian England slowly and deliberately batters the senses of the viewer, bruising the psyche as the film swells and climbs to a chilling and powerful peak that leaves the theater-goer feeling emotionally wrecked.

I thought about Never Let Me Go for days afterward. It’s themes of love, loneliness, and of the basic value of time haunted my steps. Never Let Me Go is an important film that should be considered for the moral questions that are raised in its science fiction premise, but also for the most elemental and basic questions that it raises about the brevity of life, the relentless march of time, and the significance of the most basic human feeling: Love. 

Which is something we should all be able to relate to.

Score: 4/5

Kirk out.