Videos by ComicBook.com
The feature film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is one such movie. Beautifully written and acted, it explores the idea of human cloning for organ harvesting in a haunting and profoundly intimate manner. However, when the film came out in 2010, Never Let Me Go didn’t even cross the $10 million mark at the box office.
Never Let Me Go Chooses Substance Over Style
Never Let Me Go follows the lives of three friends – Cathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (played by none other than the Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield). We watch them grow from schoolchildren to young adults, and how their lives are impacted and cut short when they must begin their “donations”. Thanks to a medical breakthrough made in 1952, Cathy, Tommy, and Ruth are all clones whose sole purpose is to have their organs harvested, presumably for the organically born population. Yet, the brilliance of Never Let Me Go isn’t spent on the logistics and the dystopian nature of its premise. The word “clone” is hardly ever used in the movie, if at all. Instead, the focus of the movie is all how these three young people cling to and love each other in different ways.
Even though Never Let Me Go prioritizes its characters and their relationships over any sci-fi flash, director Mark Romanek still imbues the movie with world-building that allows us to understand that Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth are clones. The story is set in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the considerably lower-tech time period makes a sharp contrast with the fictional medical advancement that has yet to be achieved in reality. The historical setting imbues Never Let Me Go with a sense of timelessness, and here, the hallmarks of the genre are found in the details, rather than being put front and center. For instance, they have to tap in and out of their homes with a microchip that’s implanted into their wrist. In keeping the focus on the relationships between the protagonists rather than the larger reality of the world they live in, Never Let Me Go blends science fiction with a coming-of-age tale where the line between the familiar and the fantastical is so thin and sharp, one is never overwhelmed by the speculative nature of its premise.
