Saturday 3 January 2015

Never Let Me Go

There is a lot to like about this film. But plenty to dislike too. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation. Maybe the original material is just as depressing.

The performances of the 3 leads are good and I think setting everything in familiar surroundings is a good idea. But there is an elephant or two in the room that I just couldn't ignore. As much as I tried to focus on the love story, I couldn't stop thinking that they just wouldn't be so damned accepting of their lives. For me that just ruined everything.

SPOILERS

Very early on it is clear that the protagonists are being raised as live organ donors. Whether they are orphans, clones or some other kind of engineered people is never explained although there is a reference to them being all but human late in the film.

In this sense the film is quite like The Island. But it is much more brutal than that, because here the people know that they will be donors and that their lives will be short. That's what I found hard to believe: the protagonists barely seem to question their fate. They clearly don't want to die and try to delay the donations if possible... but they don't seem to fight as you'd expect... there's no talk of escaping... or questioning the morality of what is happening to them.

Within this mess there is a nice love story. A love triangle. In a different setting I might have enjoyed it an awful lot more. But I kept coming back to the question "why are you just accepting this?"

I think I know what the writers were trying to do. They put the characters in a bad situation to show how they try to make sense of their short lives. But to me it doesn't work, because the situation is not credible.

No comments:

Post a Comment