NOTE: This review discusses plot elements of Never Let Me Go in considerable detail. Do not read it if you have not seen the film and want key story developments to remain unspoiled.The film version of Kazuo Ishiguro’s much-praised novel Never Let Me Go seems so convinced that everything it shows you is the saddest, most exquisitely poignant thing ever conceived by the mind of man that I started to feel a little self-conscious by how unmoved I was by any of it. The film is set at Hailsham, a cozy-looking British boarding school whose students — spoiler alert, although the movie doesn’t really keep this revelation much of a mystery — are actually clones or some kind of “artificial” humans being raised for the sole purpose of having their organs harvested when they reach adulthood. Much of the debate in the background of the film is over whether these “poor creatures,” as one visitor to the school refers to them, even have souls at all, and I started to wonder the same thing about myself. As I watched, stonefacedly, as Carey Mulligan quietly wept to herself at Andrew Garfield raging wildly at the heavens, I couldn’t help but wonder if those vans from the National Donor Program would soon be showing up at my door, looking to slice my liver out of me.
A big obstacle to my enjoyment of Never Let Me Go — and I will state upfront that I have not read Ishiguro’s novel — is that its dystopian premise seems so implausible, even on sci-fi alternative-universe terms. The idea that Great Britain would legalize organ farms supplied by cloned humans is far-fetched enough, but the way the film suggests (if only by omission) that these clones (or whatever they are) would have been completely denied civil rights, that this clearly outrageous state of affairs would, to all appearances, be a settled social issue, and that after four or five decades, virtually nobody — no left-leaning ACLU-type organizations, no religious activists — would be left crusading on their behalf, lacks all credibility to me. And would the question of whether these clones have souls or not really be the subject of debate for even a moment? People think puppies and rabbits have souls, for heaven’s sake — what kind of psychopath would you need to be to believe these cute British schoolchildren don’t have souls worth preserving as well?
I know I’m not supposed to be asking these questions, but how exactly has this new era of widely available organ transplants eliminated cancer and extended the average human lifespan well past 100? Are they literally growing a new artificial human being to give up their lungs to every single person who gets lung cancer? (That's a lot of Hailshams!) I also didn’t understand the way the film depicts the clones giving up their organs gradually, over the course of multiple operations. Isn’t it the usual practice in the world of organ transplants to harvest them all at once? What am I not getting here? If anyone reading this can explain my misconceptions, I’d appreciate hearing from them in the comments.
And while you’re at it, maybe you can shed light on the question of why I didn’t care much about this story’s central love triangle either. Never Let Me Go is narrated by Carey Mulligan, who as a child shared a close quasi-romantic relationship with Andrew Garfield, only to see him drift away from her when they become teenagers and take up instead with Keira Knightley. It’s suggested that Mulligan and Garfield are the ones who are “meant” to be with each other, that theirs is a “pure” love, and that Knightley eventually landed him only due to some underhanded scheming. But in practical moviegoing terms, at least to this viewer, Mulligan doesn’t seem anymore divinely suited to Garfield than Knightley does. If anything, Knightley has a moody, murky, Brontë-esque melancholy to her that matches up well with Garfield. She fights for what she wants — Mulligan prefers to lie on her bed, cry, and listen to old records. (To say that Mulligan “deserves” to have Garfield is like saying that Jennifer Aniston “deserved” to hang onto Brad Pitt even when Angelina Jolie came along. There are some battles you just can’t win, sister.)
I suppose there’s a certain sadness in Mulligan’s quiet resignation, in her decision to pine away in silence for the boy she loves, that recalls Anthony Hopkins’ empty commitment to service in The Remains of the Day, also based on an Ishiguro novel. But in that movie, Hopkins’ situation is clearly portrayed as a prison of his own making, whereas Never Let Me Go is set in a world where nobody can change their fate, and where every character’s life inevitably concludes with in a basically meaningless act of sacrifice, and where none of them try fighting for a different result.
The only element of Never Let Me Go that did produce an emotional response (other than a certain appreciation for the homey, rustic set and costume design, all dark browns, greys, and greens, which contrast nicely with the sci-fi situation) was the title song, a ’50s torch ballad by a fictitious Julie London-style singer evocatively named Judy Bridgewater. As a teenager, Mulligan’s character stumbles across an old Judy Bridgewater cassette, which becomes one of her most prized possessions — the rich, swooning music being the only thing that gives her solace whenever the loneliness of Hailsham gets too much for her to bear. Director Mark Romanek has hired Jane Monheit to “play” Judy Bridgewater, and her performance (not to mention the pitch-perfect orchestral arrangement behind her) conveys that yearning emotional nakedness that the best jazz singers of the ’50s were able to convey so effortlessly. Monheit's "Never Let Me Go" feels timeless. If only the rest of Never Let Me Go were anywhere near as stirring.
0 Yorumlar