This film’s score is pretty boss, really.
And Andrew Garfield is lovely to watch. So is Carey Mulligan. Also Keira Knightly (weird how I’ve been liking her more and more ever since The Duchess).
But here’s the thing-I purposefully read the book before watching the film. Kazuo Ishiguro’s book really can’t be more different to what you see on the screen. The tone of both remains similar-that hazy, lazy summer day on the grass, obediently falling in line, the grey of the English countryside.
What the film lacks, however, is the willing acceptance of the fate that befalls the characters.
Kathy (Mulligan) narrates, telling us the story of the students at Hailsham, an idyllic boarding school where nothing bad really ever happens-in fact, nothing really ever happens. Nothing out of their ordinary, nothing out of our ordinary-or so it would seem. While the book doesn’t exactly drag this out, exposing its secret after a chapter or two, the film decided to present to us this Stepford world, where the students at Hailsham take their pills every morning, wear metallic fobs around their wrists, and would never question leaving the grounds, not even to fetch a stray ball.
The book gently nudges us into seeing something wrong with these children, with this school. The film bops us on the head with a mallet.
...or like a popped LSD tab.
And I understand-it took me longer to read the book than it did to watch the film, and maybe if I had gone about it differently I would have a different opinion, but to me, it just didn’t work. Maybe if they had adapted it into a three-part mini, but then again, maybe not.
What made the book That Good was the childlike innocence it held throughout its story. With Kathy narrating the book as well, we were her, we saw how she thought, and her belief system became ours. Translating that into film means that we are outsiders looking in-which means all that innocence is lost. We know the world around us, we believe we know the world around them, and so we make our own assumptions.
Never Let Me Go is one of those stories in our World looking through a different filter of beliefs. The problem is that exactly. It’s too close to us, too close to being our reality to be made into a film that works. Much like the adaptation of another book I greatly enjoyed (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood), it’s almost as if this fictional world is too close to what could have been. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed many, many films about alternate universes, but it seems as though this added element of science fiction, this added element of brutality just doesn’t sit well with films.
Films like Watchmen draw on our reality and bend it to their will, but they are much more stylised, much more...noir, if you will, to be considered a possibility. Super heroes in costume? Never! People being cloned for organ donations? Maybe...
People in wellingtons? Definite.
It’s a very good attempt at adapting such a book, and the acting, cinematography and score make it a strong effort, but to tell the story of Kathy, Tommy (Garfield) and Ruth (Knightly), you need more than 130 minutes.
And that, my friends, is a review for Never Let Me Go without almost a glimmer of a spoiler. I say: Party Time!
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