Never Let Me Go [M]

Kathy H has been a Carer now for nine years. She is due soon to start her donations, which she should be looking forward to, but instead she chooses to look backward into her past. She chooses to look back on her childhood at Hailsham, her adolescence at the Cottages in the countryside, and finally her too short adult life and her final moments with her best friend Ruth and her lover Tommy. She looks back on how she and her friends grew up, grew apart, and grew to come to terms with their identities as clones harvested for vital organ donations to cure the incurable and prolong human life. 

Based on the beautifully crafted book by Kazou Ishiguro, which I’d seriously recommend you read (preferably before you watch the film), Never Let Me Go is a deeply touching drama that deals with many complicated themes from ‘science fiction’ to identity discovery, to friendship, romance, and coming to terms with inevitable death. Although rather depressing and admittedly a little bleak, this is still rather a beautiful movie that was made with care and craft, which I think really shows. 

Kathy H has been a Carer now for nine years. She is due soon to start her donations, which she should be looking forward to, but instead she chooses to look backward into her past. She chooses to look back on her childhood at Hailsham, her adolescence at the Cottages in the countryside, and finally her too short adult life and her final moments with her best friend Ruth and her lover Tommy. She looks back on how she and her friends grew up, grew apart, and grew to come to terms with their identities as clones harvested for vital organ donations to cure the incurable and prolong human life. 

The thing that I particularly admired about this movie was the fact that it didn’t rely on the stars or the music or the scenery or anything like that to move it along. Everything that makes a movie was sort of reserved and played down a little and I think this was particularly lovely because it allowed for the raw power of the story to shine through unimpeded. 

The use of colour and lighting particularly caught my eye. It’s interesting to see in all of Kathy’s memories and the ones that are at Hailsham or the Cottages or whenever she’s in her own little cloister of clones (namely her, Ruth, and Tommy), there is a distinct lack of colour and light. This doesn’t make these memories particularly gloomy or bleak in any way, they’re actually quite lovely, what I think was really nice about the whole thing was that the fact that what Kathy is certain of has little colour and the things or worlds she isn’t certain of have loads of colour and light just makes a very interesting point about her character. 

The performances are lovely with the central trio being Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightly, and Andrew Garfield. Carey as Kathy was just as I’d imagined her: reserved, calm on the surface, but with a hint of melancholy about her. She was lovely. Andrew Garfield as Tommy provides both the small bouts of comic relief as well as the more dramatic scenes and Andrew did the role beautifully, you could see the cogs working in his head when he takes in new information and disappointment. And then Keira Knightly as Ruth did the role with a surprisingly charming confidence, selfishness, and childish attitude. I thought she did really well. 

Starring Izzy Meikle-Small, Charlie Rower, Ella Purnell, Charlotte Rampling, Sally Hawkins, Andrea Riseborough, Domhnall Gleeson, and Natalie Richard, Never Let Me Go is a very lovely crafted movie filled with friendship, love, drama, and loss. It’s obviously a bleak topic that you’ve got to be in the mood for, but when you do brave it it’s worth it.