Review

Review Date: 18-October-10
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Never Let Me Go (2010)

The premise of Never Let Me Go sounds like science fiction. In an alternate version of the 1950s, scientists discovered how to abolish cancer and other major diseases through organ transplants. This created a new social stratum made up of people who were cloned from rabble (i.e., those with negligible power) and reared by the British government for the specific purpose of providing harvestable organs. The story follows three such people from their contented childhood in boarding school through the end of their short adult lives.

In the normal course of science fiction one would expect these organ "donors" to rise up and demand their individual rights or at least challenge the system and explore the definition of humanity. But Never Let Me Go, based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, bypasses the expected reactions to such a premise in favor of a languid love triangle and a nugget of generic philosophy. The narrator Kathy (Carey Mulligan), her lifelong love Tommy (Andrew Garfield), and her best-friend-cum-rival Ruth (Keira Knightley) discover fairly young why they have been created and never question it, even when they grow older and suffer from it first hand. (As children these three are played by Isobel Meikle-Small, Charlie Rowe, and Ella Purnell, respectively.) Although mankind is blinkered and selfish and people commonly become the adults their childhood prepares them to be, the clones' experience is still a doubtful prospect which the movie does not render convincing. If it looks human, acts human, and obviously undergoes all the emotions of a human, you have to think it would generate more widespread sympathy. (A handful of women at the boarding school consider that the clones might have souls but don't do much to press the matter.) And since they look, act, and feel human, you have to think that Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth would resent having their bodies plundered with more passion than they do. Even as born-and-bred victims they are exceedingly anemic.

Perhaps it's okay to be anemic if you're a nonentity within the plot and a symbol within the narrative. The final moments of the film reveal that the main concern is not scientific ethics or humanity, but the urgency incumbent on all people to recognize the brevity of life and cherish what makes it worth living. For Kathy, like most people, this means love. This oft-expressed sentiment is all well and good; however, when love is defined as a fulfillment you should be glad you had for a few days before you and your beloved were ripped open like liver and kidney goody bags, the carpe diem moral loses some of its oomph.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.