Never Let Me Go

From a book by Kazuo Ishiguro, this is a quietly British dystopian tale. In 1957, a public information film type info card tells us at the start, there was a major leap forward in medicine. By the early sixties, the life expectancy was well over 100. And this, it seems, has created a need.

Cut to the seventies, and we see a quaint British boarding school, in which live (amongst others) Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. The school is at once idyllic and run down, and there's something just a bit wrong about it. Like, they don't have teachers, they have guardians. Everything seems worn, and second hand. You think maybe that they're in an orphanage; there's no talk of parents, going home or anything at all about the outside world. Presently, it becomes clear that these kids are part of an underclass, second class citizens created for a very specific need. In this setting, where they have basically nothing but each other, childish relationships flourish, first between Kathy (soon to be played by Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (soon to be played by Andrew Garfield), who are sweet young kids, only to be scuppered as Ruth (stbpb Keira Knightley) sweeps in and poaches Tommy.

We then cut to their teenage years, again lived at a remove among others of their ilk, then finally to adulthood, as the future that's been planned for them from birth plays out.

There's two levels to this film. There's the surface plot, and then there's the allegorical meaning underneath. At heart, this is a film about people who are born with very little hope, very little opportunity, who try and live the best life they can under the circumstances, while enduring the crushing sadness of a hopeless existence, with resigned acceptance and stiff upper lip. And looking about the world today, you can certainly see that as a message worth sending. The characters are conditioned from birth to accept their awful fate, and really, aren't we all? I wanted to be Han Solo when I grew up, and I now work in insurance.

On the surface, however, the message is more muddled. We're basically being asked to believe in a system where, if you keep the kids poor and teach them to settle for less, when you finally let them off their leash a bit, they'll lack the ability to rebel. And I don't believe in kids like that, like you could have a system where everybody does as they're told and never rebels, just because they've never been allowed to listen to Rage Against The Machine. I wanted these kids (and I think of them as kids, even into adulthood) to turn around and refuse to submit to the terrible future mapped out for them, and really, I just can't accept this fictional construct where nobody does. An element always rebels, disobeys, becomes criminal if it must. While these characters elicit your every sympathy, and while they're beautifully drawn and acted, I can't believe they could ever exist.

Overall, though, the film benefits from being a film because of this - a book, I think, I would put down, disagree with, and ultimately be put off by. A film carries on, imposes its reality on you, makes you see it through to a very, very bitter end. It's a compelling, beautiful film, shot in pale, bleached tones which are reminiscent of the NHS, and of public information safety films. Almost like a Magritte painting; it's of something impossible, but on the other hand, there it is in front of you, executed in clean lines which demand you look at it and think about what it might represent.