Never Let Me Go

Nicole Dora casts her eyes over Never let Me Go, the new movie from Mark Romanek:

I have never been a fan of book-to-film adaptations and, while I haven’t read Never Let Me Go, I can easily say that the film counterpart is nothing short of wonderful. What starts out as the seemingly normal lives of children living at boarding school, slowly evolves into a tragic story of survival – just not how we know it.

While the first part of the story proves tragic enough, with a couple having to face a love lost due to the actions of a jealous third party, the fact that all their lives will be cut short because they are not deemed ‘human’ enough takes the film to a heartbreaking new level. Director Mark Romanek merges these two very different issues together beautifully; the completely familiar concept of the love-triangle fused with the inconceivable issue of farming people for their organs. Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan have been cast perfectly as young women who struggle to come to terms with their purpose in life, and The Social Network’s Andrew Garfield showcases his immense talent, ensuring that we are all wondering what his next move will be.

The fact that the film is set from the 60’s through to the 90’s – a period of time that has already passed - makes the moral and ethical implications of human cloning hit even closer to home. If you had the chance to cure all manner of disease at the expense of humans that are cloned for that exact purpose, what would you decide? I would like to think that humans could not turn their back on their own race in such a cruel way, but when faced with a world without cancer it is hard to know what we are capable of.

Review by Nicole Dora. Check out the trailer below.