Last year, our own Rob Cotto declared Never Let Me Go the “most overlooked film of the year,” and I have to wholeheartedly agree. I know that seems a bit uncharacteristic, but it was genuinely surprising that this sci-fi allegory escaped my gaze when it first came out. Granted, the cast is fairly indie and doesn’t demand droves of viewers. Keira Knightly had her moment a few years ago, but little since; Carey Mulligan is on the rise but followed up her Oscar-nominated performance in An Education with Wall Street 2: Stone’s Plea for Relevance; and Andrew Garfield hadn’t quite hit the screen yet in The Social Network. At the same time, the stoic performances of all three make this movie powerful without being overbearing.
As the movie begins, the audience is told via a tag “By 1967, life expectancy passed 100 years,” which suggests virtual immortality. The means by which this happened is scientific, but simultaneously horrific: the affluent are afforded the benefit of access to people who are expected to “feel a great sense of pride in what we do,” but who are petri dishes for organs.
Growing up in Halishem, an English boarding school, each child is informed that “keeping yourself healthy inside is imperative,” and while it’s a noble sentiment to preach good health and hygiene, the reason for this rhetoric is to keep them healthy long enough to “start to donate their vital organs.” As I signed the back of my organ donor card when I was eighteen, I was under the assumption that this would be the most altruistic action I could make; however, I always assumed I would be dead well before my innards were harvested. This is not the case for Kathy (Mulligan), Tommy (Garfield), and Ruth (Knightly), who grow up together at Helishem and then spend the next few years at The Cottages awaiting their call to become a “Carer,” living the “life that’s been set out” for them, until they “complete.”
There’s a wealth of genius morbidity coursing through Never Let Me Go, and it starts with elision of each student’s last name. Kathy is Kathy H. to differentiate her from any other Kathy’s, but they are sans surname, which means they are sans familial lineage, as if they were processed and not born. The film never gets into the intricacies of whether or not they were bred in a dish or a uterus, and this is an upside; rather, it makes the characters more relatable. If they were bred in a dish, we could, potentially, see them as a product for usage – like chattel. (I apologize to my vegetarian readers.) On the other hand, if their origin is ambiguous, we are forced to see them as people, not as the soulless commodities that the directors of Hilshem assume them to be.
In addition, each “donor” is groomed to believe their station in life is as a “carer,” a charming euphemism that serves to uplift their senses of responsibility and compassion while simultaneously obfuscating the sickening accuracy of more appropriate terms like “supply shed” or “spare parts.” Doubly disturbing is that this rhetoric is rather effused among those at Halshem and has the intended calming, nurturing effect, something that’s clear as Kathy notes “I’m good at my job. My patients always do better than expected and hardly ever classified as agitated.” There is not only a sense of acceptance in her role as carer — a word eerily homophonic to “career” — but there’s also a pride that comes along with doing her job well. The same use of euphemisms can be seen when “complete” replaces “die”: as in “most carers complete after their third or fourth donation.” Here, to “complete” suggests an appropriate, fulfilled ending, ripe with a sense of duty and accomplishment – as opposed to a sacrifice of one’s life for the sake of another, unseen individual.
Along with these euphemisms, comes an allegory on the middle class’ toil to keep its head afloat while the upper class reaps the benefits of labor. I promise, this will note digress to a rant on the nefarious nature of capitalism, something John Maynard Keynes once defined as “The astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greater good of everyone” – but again, I promise not to digress. Either way, there is a comment being limned here on stagnation and the futility of class improvement. Sure, it’s cynical, but it’s rather accurate. Our three “carers” are expected to exist only for the benefit of others. Regardless of their feelings, aspirations, or skills, they exist to perpetuate the lives of the affluent, and they will “all complete,” despite rumored “deferrals.”
Some might suggest that the carers actually represent the lower class, but the flaw in this argument is that they are too pristine and well-groomed. We’re going to get into some stereotyping here, but our carers are encouraged to be as healthy as possible and educated in boarding schools. Perhaps they are “modeled on trash,” but they’re also too well-kempt and charismatic to be. They are the middle class through and through.
Something else that remains disturbingly unspoken – and maybe this is tackled in depth in Ishiguro’s novel from which this film was adapted – is the futility of change in social political ideology. What I mean to suggest is that living forever prophecies the impossibility of change. If the wealthy are running the state, and the wealthy prevent themselves from dying, then such inhumane policies would cease to desist. This is not to suggest that a state cannot be successful under a wealthy oligarchy, but these few, with their flaws in tow, would remain in power for, seemingly, ever, so long as there are carers willing to complete.
This narrative is told with a haunting subtlety that prevents the over exposition of details to make sure the audience “gets it” over and over again. Neither screenwriter Alex Garland nor director Mark Romanek take their audience’s intelligence for granted, and this is rather refreshing. A film with such a heavy allegory runs the risk of coming off as preachy and heavy handed, but this one does not.
It’s beautiful in its cynicism, eerie in its prophecy, and resonant in its poignancy.
