Never Let Me Go (2010)
I’d heard about this film, I’d heard about this book, and I hadn’t time for either, no matter how much both appealed to me. Eventually I found time for just one, the film. And after viewing it tonight, I’m going to fight tooth and nail to make time for the book too.
The film follows three people, Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightly) from the time they are students in Hailsham boarding school in East Sussex, to their early adult years, as they come to terms with who they are and how their lives are meant to play out.
This is the first idea that I know of that has a futuristic plotline set in the past. The story begins in 1952 and ends in 1994. I guess you could call it an alternate universe setting, as in that time scientists have discovered the cure to many incurable diseases and have allowed the life expectancy of normal people to exceed 100 years. They do this, in part, through organ replacement. And they get those organs from organ donors they grow.
Now, unlike many films with the same idea (see Repo Men) this film is not a dystopia where people are frightened to go outside alone. It’s the opposite. The idea of organ donation is so commonplace that no one is shocked or surprised by it anymore. The kids know that they have a purpose in life and they know that they will only live to be a certain age before they simply run out of organs to donate and “complete”. Now, before I get pummeled by people who think I’m spoilering them for the entire movie, chill, you find all this out within the first 20 minutes.
From the very beginning, Hailsham is described as a special school. The kids there take medicine every morning, they have medical checkups regularly where every bruise is treated as a potentially life-threatening thing, they practice real-life situations like ordering in a cafe in roleplaying class, they draw pictures that get taken away and “chosen” for a special gallery that they never see and they are kept isolated from their surrounding environment by being told stories of kids who had wondered off and died. So right from the off the place feels a little odd. And as the film progresses and our three heroes grow up, the feeling of strangeness doesn’t wear off.
What I love about this film the most, I think, is that it’s an incredibly realistic situation even though it’s based in a scientific era we have yet to reach ourselves. The donor children have pretty normal lives if you exclude the fact that they aren’t socialized in normal society: they live alone from the age of 18, they have the choice to get a job as caregivers or to explore the world around them at their own will, they are allowed to travel and meet others like them… They’re not caged animals waiting for their turn to die. Another aspect of this realism that astounded me was that since they are essentially normal people, the fact that they can and do fall in love is not glossed over and forgotten.
This is, in essence, a love story. Or, a love triangle. Ruth and Tommy are together from Hailsham through to their early twenties, but it’s obvious that Kathy loves Tommy and Tommy loves her back. The idea that they stay together without that spark for so many years is due to the fear of being left completely alone. To live alone and die alone once their notice comes due. It’s this desperation, I think, that makes the film as stunning as it is, because it doesn’t just cling to the idea of togetherness, no matter how false, but also to the idea of survival. Once the children hear of the potential for two donors in love to delay their notices by up to 4 years they begin to fight for any shred of proof that they can provide to stay alive.
What gets me, though, is the unbelievable emotion that underlies the entire film, from its start to it’s brilliant end. So many things that aren’t shown in the film and are mentioned only in passing affected me. The idea that Hailsham was one of its kind and that once the first batch of students left it was closed down, that other institutions that are essentially breeding people for organ donations are not at all as humane as Hailsham was, simply because people decided it was too “difficult” for them to handle that donors were more than just their organs, but people. People with potential to have a life of their own. The simple idea that the donor children were modeled after drug addicts and criminals rather than the rich and powerful really hit me as well, and I can’t even explain why.
All in all this is a stunning film. I can’t even describe it properly (as you can probably tell from the above 800 words worth of ramble) and I just finished watching it. It’s not an easy film to watch. There is nothing graphic in it, but at the same time the emotional charge that runs throughout is so powerful! I give it an 8/10 and would most likely watch it again, just not so soon after watching it the first time. I recommend it to everyone. It’s a film that I actually think can’t be missed, especially considering how obsessed we are with immortality and how likely we are to reach the level of science and medicine described in the film soon. It’s unmissable and essential.
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