Never Let Me Go
{4.5/5} “It had never occurred to me that our lives, so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I’d known, maybe I’d have kept tighter hold of them and not let unseen tides pull us apart. ”
Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth attend a boarding school that seems almost normal. There are a few strange things, such as every student’s fear of going beyond the school boundaries — they’ve heard that terrible things happened to students who did. Then one of their teachers reveals the truth — they have been created in order to be organ donors. When they become adults they will start donating organs and after they’ve donated 3 or 4 organs they will die.
Never Let Me Go was released in 2010.
It’s really an alternate history — it supposes that as far back as the 1970s there are children who are cloned (or something) in order to donate organs to “real” people. The movie is about the childhood and adult lives of the main characters — how they navigate friendship, love, and the mysterious aspects of the world they find themselves in. The science fictional aspect is mostly in the background, like in Another Earth.
This is a quiet movie, and an effective one.
The haunting music is by Rachel Portman (One Day). I particularly like the track “We All Complete.”
Carey Mulligan (An Education) plays Kathy, Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man) plays Tommy, and Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) plays Ruth. Charlotte Rampling (Melancholia) has a small role as a teacher.
The movie was based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day). It was directed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo).