3 reviews

---

Russell George February 15, 2011

Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of the novel on which Never Let Me Go is based, said two particularly interesting things in the Q&A session after this preview showing. Firstly, he described his books as being concerned with how people accept and bring dignity to their life situations. His characters are stoic, heart-wrenchingly so at times, and all the more beautiful because of it. And as in Remains of the Day, another Ishiguro novel, Never Let Me Go is about how people understand the confines of their lives, and the tides of emotion that run just beneath the surface. It’s a wonderful film, faintly melancholic but never maudlin, with the three leads faultlessly believable. I left wanting to re-read the book.

And the second interesting thing that Ishiguro mentioned? Apparently, test audiences in the US had left thinking that the events of Never Let Me Go actually happened. You’ll have to go watch it to appreciate that one, but it does suggest that Production companies probably shouldn’t always listen to test audiences.

---

Rachael Connelly February 10, 2011

An achingly beautiful film that will *only* have you scratching your head if you've never considered your own mortality and what it means to live life with dignity and with purpose. Brought to you by the guy who made the terrifying yet stylish One Hour Photo.

Never Let Me Go, the book by Kazuo Ishiguro, shook me to the core: I was worried that the film would not capture the atmosphere that Ishiguro conjured up in the book, but I was not disappointed.

It is difficult to talk about the plot without giving away some of the terrible truths that are slowly revealed: suffice it to say that the boarding school Hailsham is not all it seems and this slowly becomes apparent. The book has more time to explore this school experience: the film has to reveal its awful secret somewhat sooner in order to move on to the second part of the plot – the half-life that the main characters lead in their young adulthood.

The film blurb describes the film as a love story, but this is to miss the point of the book. Yes, there is a love story and a love triangle, but the terrible constraints on these young lives is what shapes them and the way they behave, their aching innocence inside their appalling circumstances.

The book has a slight dreamy quality about it. The children grow up in an apparently warm and friendly environment – it is just that they are not allowed to leave the confines of the school grounds and the few outsiders who come to the school treat them with slight disgust. The reason for this only becomes clear later. The reader or viewer is led from a vague feeling that all is not right to a full awareness of the horror that these young people have to face. I was concerned how Keira Knightley would handle this part, but she is good, as are Andrew Garfield and that wonderful actress, Charlotte Rampling. Full honour goes to Carey Mulligan, as it always does in any film she is seen in.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese man who has spent most of his life in this country – from the age of six in fact. I believe his parents never really adjusted fully to English life, so he grew up under the influence of both cultures. How, therefore, he has managed to write a story which is so quintessentially English in its colour and language I find quite astonishing but, as in The Remains of the Day, this is what he has managed to do and the film, here too, is true to his vision. The slow views of the countryside, seaside, buildings, the light, can only be English. This is a remarkable film.

Kathryn 14 Feb 2011