Never Let Me Go: A Review Written in a Hurry
No, not the same as this:
That guy from Steelheart would have a hell of a time kayaking with Burt Reynolds. He's sure got a purty mouth.
No, this is a review of one of the better SFnal movies I've seen in a while. Never Let Me Go, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It stars Carey Mulligan (An Education, Bleak House) as Kathy, a girl raised in a prestigious English boarding school. Along with her best friends, Tommy and Ruth, life seems fairly normal, if not sheltered. The children learn lessons about buying things at the store, sing hymns, and are sternly lectured on the maladies of smoking by their headmistress. The movie is introduced with a blurb about his it is 1967 and the average life-expectancy is over 100 years.
Subtle hints show us that something is different from the England of 1967 we know. Broken toys are given out to the children for a reward. Explicit sex ed is demonstrated with skeleton models. The children play games with odds and ends of other sports equipment and in one game, where a ball gets knocked over a fence, leaves the children frightful of what waits on the other side. The children speak in hushed tones about how a boy once climbed the fence and was found in the woods, tied to a tree with his hands and feet chopped off. The new teacher asks how they know this is true, and the children intimate that it must be true because someone said it was. This is not the first time a rumor is taken as a truth, and later, when the new teacher is dismissed for telling the children the purpose of their schooling, she is dismissed and a desperation sets in on the children.
The children graduate Hailsham School with the knowledge that they have been bred and raised as Donors for people. Some "complete" on their first donation, while others may last to their third. They enter the real world, shunned by common people, continuing to live sheltered lives, trusting to rumor and heresay about donation deferments and a promise that if they are to fall in love, their donations may be deferred. Kathy loses in love to Ruth for Tommy's love, and resigns herself to be a Carer, or one who works with Donors during their transition to completion, or death. Later, old feelings return as Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) enter her life again, both already having begun their donations.
The subtleties of the film draw you into their world, creating an environment that is not only vastly more believable than the Michael Bay calamity, The Island, but also to the fact that these characters are half-people, regarded as nothing more than walking, talking spare parts for a world which lives on at their expense. There is no flight to freedom other than connections with old friends and mentors, there is no rebellion of the Donors, or underground movement to set them free. The schools themselves are vestiges of a more humane world that was trying to answer a question no one bothered to ask: what makes a person? What is a soul?
This story reminds me of The Handmaid's Tale, without the polemic overtones and now played out religious right is bad guy backdrop. Religion does not play into the morality, more the supply and demand of immortality which drives our society today. The lives of the donors aren't much different than our own. There isn't much that separates us from them, or our world from theirs. The story is less cautionary than it is emotional. There can be no conspiracy or underground movement when the fates of some are predestined by a society that sees the benefits of their actions and doesn't analyze the ethics of it.
Highly recommended for those interested in thought-provoking speculative fiction, rather than some abomination of storytelling stringing together sex scenes with car chases. The cinematography is excellent, the performances are striking. The delivery of the movie is visceral. Not to be missed.
That guy from Steelheart would have a hell of a time kayaking with Burt Reynolds. He's sure got a purty mouth.
No, this is a review of one of the better SFnal movies I've seen in a while. Never Let Me Go, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It stars Carey Mulligan (An Education, Bleak House) as Kathy, a girl raised in a prestigious English boarding school. Along with her best friends, Tommy and Ruth, life seems fairly normal, if not sheltered. The children learn lessons about buying things at the store, sing hymns, and are sternly lectured on the maladies of smoking by their headmistress. The movie is introduced with a blurb about his it is 1967 and the average life-expectancy is over 100 years.
Subtle hints show us that something is different from the England of 1967 we know. Broken toys are given out to the children for a reward. Explicit sex ed is demonstrated with skeleton models. The children play games with odds and ends of other sports equipment and in one game, where a ball gets knocked over a fence, leaves the children frightful of what waits on the other side. The children speak in hushed tones about how a boy once climbed the fence and was found in the woods, tied to a tree with his hands and feet chopped off. The new teacher asks how they know this is true, and the children intimate that it must be true because someone said it was. This is not the first time a rumor is taken as a truth, and later, when the new teacher is dismissed for telling the children the purpose of their schooling, she is dismissed and a desperation sets in on the children.
The children graduate Hailsham School with the knowledge that they have been bred and raised as Donors for people. Some "complete" on their first donation, while others may last to their third. They enter the real world, shunned by common people, continuing to live sheltered lives, trusting to rumor and heresay about donation deferments and a promise that if they are to fall in love, their donations may be deferred. Kathy loses in love to Ruth for Tommy's love, and resigns herself to be a Carer, or one who works with Donors during their transition to completion, or death. Later, old feelings return as Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) enter her life again, both already having begun their donations.
The subtleties of the film draw you into their world, creating an environment that is not only vastly more believable than the Michael Bay calamity, The Island, but also to the fact that these characters are half-people, regarded as nothing more than walking, talking spare parts for a world which lives on at their expense. There is no flight to freedom other than connections with old friends and mentors, there is no rebellion of the Donors, or underground movement to set them free. The schools themselves are vestiges of a more humane world that was trying to answer a question no one bothered to ask: what makes a person? What is a soul?
This story reminds me of The Handmaid's Tale, without the polemic overtones and now played out religious right is bad guy backdrop. Religion does not play into the morality, more the supply and demand of immortality which drives our society today. The lives of the donors aren't much different than our own. There isn't much that separates us from them, or our world from theirs. The story is less cautionary than it is emotional. There can be no conspiracy or underground movement when the fates of some are predestined by a society that sees the benefits of their actions and doesn't analyze the ethics of it.
Highly recommended for those interested in thought-provoking speculative fiction, rather than some abomination of storytelling stringing together sex scenes with car chases. The cinematography is excellent, the performances are striking. The delivery of the movie is visceral. Not to be missed.