Never Let Me Go Has a Weak Grip

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Directed by Mark Romanek

Fox Searchlight, 103 mins. Rated R.

* * *

Never Let Me Go is based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel. The setting is Hailsham, a seemingly tony and bucolic English country prep school for “special” students. They’re special all right. Thanks to a medical breakthrough in 1952, life spans have been extended dramatically. The problem is that lots of stuff wears out in the course of a hundred plus years, so how does one insure a steady supply of spare parts? Send in the clones. Hailsham and schools like it are literally breeding grounds for the clones who will provide the eyes, lungs, hearts, and other body parts needed by their English originals. Most of the young charges we meet will donate three or four times before they “complete” (expire) in their mid- to late-twenties.

Ishiguro--best known as the writer of The Remains of the Day--was shortlisted for Britain’s Book Prize for Never Let Me Go. He didn’t win, I suspect, because the novel is a bit like the film in that it’s moving but ultimately a tad empty feeling. The film’s central tension is whether clones have humanity. In this case we have a triad of friends, lovers, and donors--Kathy H (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (Andrew Garfield). Kathy and Tommy are soul mates--that is, if they have souls, but Tommy and Ruth are lovers despite not connecting on an emotional level--again, if they have emotions. This isn’t exactly path- breaking territory. Think Startrek’s Data, Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the recent (and superior) film Moon.

This is not to say that Never Let Me Go is a bad film. It’s very hard to play characters whose future is scripted, but Mulligan, Knightley, and Garfield do a nice job with the ambiguity over self awareness and the potential for empowerment. Do they, or do they not have free will? Is there, or is there not a glimmer of hope that Tommy and Kathy will get a short reprieve? Can they be happy even if they do? Romanek also depicts alienation in intriguing ways. Only the Brits can make a seaside resort look bleak and soulless; Romanek’s shots of coastal Fife are so forlorn that they save him from the need to be didactic in raising the question of whether longevity’s cost is the erasure of humanity.

For all of this, however, Never Let Me Go doesn’t completely sink its hook into viewers. Partly it’s because we figure things out way before the characters do. In addition, the very nature of the subject material lends itself better in print than on film. Our characters can only explore the possibility of an inner spark, not actually display one. They are (by nature?) passive and although each actor does a credible job within the role, it’s just hard to pace a film featuring those who are acted upon. Oddly enough, a histrionic speech or two on the nature of life and unfairness might have enhanced the film, even if they were hokey. We keep waiting for a character to answer the question of whether clones have souls, but we come up as empty as a beach on Fife. As a result, our emotional response to film is equally distant and vacant.

This one is a classic mixed bag. It’s worth watching, but don’t get your hopes up. Enjoy its stark textures and competent performances, but you will probably derive more intellectual satisfaction from contemplating what’s not here rather than what is. And you’ll need to rent it--it left the theaters at a much faster pace than it unfolds.