When it comes to the genre of science fiction, our minds tend to default to advanced spaceships, cyborgs, and galaxies far, far away. However, sometimes the best and most arresting entries in the genre imagine a world almost exactly like our own. Films like these don’t get the biggest budgets or massive studio marketing pushes, allowing some of the most heart-wrenching, thought-provoking sci-fi gems to fly under the radar.
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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.
Never Let Me Go Challenges Our Preconceived Notion of Science Fiction
At its core, Never Let Me Go is a tragedy. Ruth dies after completing a relatively few donations. Tommy and Kathy learn that, contrary to the rumors they’ve heard, being in love won’t buy them any more time before they have to surrender their organs to strangers. But the couple seems to prove the hypothesis their schoolteachers and overseers had been contemplating all along: the clones in this world do have souls, they are capable of love and paralyzing grief. Never Let Me Go makes a quiet statement about what it means to be human, yet it’s one that any viewer is unable to ignore.
Both writer Alex Garland, famous for penning the modern sci-fi classics Ex Machina, 28 Days Later, and Annihilation, uses their command over the genre to subtly weave the cruelty of the world into the script, without compromising any of their characters’ compelling humanity. Romanek, perhaps best known for directing One Hour Photo, imbues a sense of ever-present dread into Never Let Me Go, while Garfield, Mulligan, and Knightley all fiercely fight against the inevitability of their fates in the film. The result is a viewing experience that sits with you long after the credits have rolled, and like us, may leave you scratching your head as to why it didn’t enjoy more commercial success when it was first released.
No matter what the box office returns were, Never Let Me Go is sure to please both the sci-fi fanatic and the lover of character-driven pieces. It’s a must-watch for fans of Garfield, as he is magnetic as Tommy in the film, and effectively expands what a science fiction movie can be. Not in scope or scale, but in depth and texture.
Never Let Me Go is currently streaming on Hulu. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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