Never Let Me Go (2010)

Never Let Me Go (2010)


Never Let Me Go is a movie that got zero Oscar attention, and no real praise from the movie critics, and I have no idea why.

In my opinion, it is a profound movie.  It really made me think for days after watching it, and was emotional enough to have me in tears at the end.  It has a unique plot and terrific acting, and it really explores the human condition: who has a soul, what defines a human being, and what are we willing to sacrifice for our own welfare?

The story revolves around three characters.  The main character is Kathy, a kind and smart girl (Carey Mulligan).  Her best friend is the more outgoing Ruth (Keira Knightley, in probably the best performance I've seen from her).  The third, Tommy (Andrew Garfield), is a passionate boy made an outcast by his fiery temper and lack of artistic ability as a child, who becomes the love interest of both girls.

Ruth and Kathy.

The children, living in a boarding school called Hailsham, are clones.  We are made aware of this early on.  The movie begins with the following: "The breakthrough in medical science came in 1952.  Doctors could now cure the previously incurable.  By 1967, life expectancy passed 100 years."  The students are well treated, and a great emphasis is placed on their artwork.  They try to create works that will qualify to be placed in a mysterious "Gallery," by a woman known as Madame.

Miss Emily addresses the Hailsham students.

They attend classes, make friends, form relationships, and seem just like any other children -except that they're not.  They are reminded by their headmistress, Miss Emily, that they are "special."  As a teacher tells them, "None of you will go to America.  None of you will work in supermarkets.  None of you will do anything, except live the life that has already been set out for you.  You will become adults, but only briefly.  Before you are old, before you are even middle aged, you will start to donate your vital organs.  And sometime around your third or fourth donation, your short life will be completed.  You have to know who you are, and what you are.  It's the only way to lead decent lives."

The Donors, as they are called, are aware of what their future holds, and never seem to question it.  When they leave Hailsham, they are sent to live outside of the school in a place called The Cottages.  There they live pretty much free lives, until it is time for their donations to begin.  None of them try to escape, even though they are fully aware of their fates.  There are rumors that if two Donors fall truly in love, they can petition for an extension of a few years (called a "deferral"), so that they can have some time together.

This is the extent to which they challenge the system they are a part of.  In fact, some of them even contribute to the process, guiding other clones to their donations in their positions as "Carers."  Kathy becomes a Carer: "My name is Kathy H. I'm 28 years old. I've been a Carer for 9 years. And I'm good at my job. My patients always do better than expected, and hardly ever classified as agitated, even if they're about to make a donation. I'm not trying to boast, but I feel a great sense of pride in what we do. Carers and Donors have achieved so much. That said, we aren't machines. In the end it wears you down. I suppose that's why I now spend most of my time not looking forwards, but looking back. To the Cottages and Hailsham and what happened to us there. Me. Tommy. And Ruth."

Ruth checks out a Possible.

The Donors, while not actively questioning their part in the scheme of things, do wonder about their origins.  In particular, there seems to be an ever present curiosity about, and desire to find, the people they call their "Originals."  Ruth travels to town because a fellow Donor thinks they saw a "Possible" for her Original.  Ruth is crushed when it turns out not to be her, though she claims not to be surprised, as she assumes their Originals all come from the dregs of society, and she wouldn't find hers working in an office.  Similarly, Kathy believes that perhaps her Original was in the sex industry, because she sometimes feels sexual urges and doesn't know this is normal, so she scours pornographic magazines in search of her Original -in search of where she came from, and who she is.

Tommy and Kathy.

Kathy falls in love with Tommy early on when they are still children.  He is struggling with his "rages" and unpopularity, and she befriends him.  It seems that a romance is the natural next step, until Ruth notices the budding friendship and intercedes.  Bolder than Kathy, she makes a move on Tommy, and they end up a couple.  As young adults living in The Cottages, Ruth and Tommy are still together.  It is evident that the connection between Kathy and Tommy is still there, but Ruth is too powerful a barrier.  Tommy seems unable to break away from her.  It is then that Kathy decides to become a Carer.  She leaves for training, and Ruth and Tommy finally break up and go their separate ways.  As Kathy muses, "It had never occurred to me that our lives, so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.  If I'd known, maybe I'd have kept tighter hold of them."

Years later, while working as a Carer, Kathy bumps into Ruth.  Ruth is a shadow of what she was.  Two donations have left her bone thin, pale faced, and limping along with the aid of a walker.  She has lost her fire and spirit.  Ruth asks, "Are you surprised at me?  I expect I look a bit broken, Kath.  It's okay.  I don't think I'd want to survive my third donation, anyway," and even Ruth's nurse observes to Kathy that, "I think she wants to complete.  And, as you know, when they want to complete, they usually do."  To "complete" means to die.

Ruth tries to make amends.

Ruth has spent a lot of time thinking about the past, now that she knows the end is near for her, and her deepest regret is that she kept Kathy and Tommy apart, when she knew that they were in love: "I'd like you to forgive me.  I don't expect you to...For keeping you and Tommy apart.  Should have been you two together, I always knew it.  As far back as I can remember.  It wasn't just because of the rumors about deferrals.  It was because I was jealous.  You had real love and I didn't, and I didn't want to be the one that was left alone.  It's the worst thing I ever did.  And now I want to put it right...I can if you two get a deferral."  She has found Madame's address.  Madame is supposed to be the one that can grant a deferral.  Ruth is desperate to right the wrong she has done them.  Shortly after, we see Ruth on the operating table, cut open for her third donation.  She flat lines, and is pushed aside like a piece of garbage.  It is repulsive to see that lack of respect for her humanity.

Ruth Completes.

Tommy and Kathy, together at last, and blissful in their love, decide to go to Madame's and apply for the Deferral.  Madame lets them in, and Tommy begins: "We're in love.  And it's true love.  It's verifiable...Well, we'd heard about the deferrals.  And we'd worked out the purpose of the Gallery...to use our art from Hailsham to look into our souls, which would verify that we deserved a deferral.  But the problem is I was a little bit mixed up back then and I didn't really do any art, so you never took anything of mine.  I know, I know that that is my fault and it is probably much too late, but I brought some stuff with me today."



He proceeds to show her the art he has been working on since he left Hailsham -magnificent art that he has created over the years after coming up with his theory for the purpose of the Gallery.  Suddenly, Miss Emily, the headmistress enters, and explains to them: "You have to understand, Hailsham was the last place to consider the ethics of donation.  We used your art to show what you're capable of, to show that donor children are all but human - but we were providing an answer to a question no one was asking.  Would you ask people to return to darkness, the days of lung cancer, breast cancer, motor neuron disease?  They'll simply say no...We didn't have the gallery in order to look into your souls.  We have the gallery to see if you had souls at all."


Kathy is the first to realize the implications: that there are no deferrals.  That in the eyes of society, they are non-humans.  Expendable, disposable, and void of true human spirit.  Madame looks at them with pity and says, "You poor creatures."  Hailsham no longer exists.  The Donors that had the chance to grow up there were the lucky ones, if they can be called that.

Madame offers to keep Tommy's work, but he carefully wraps up the art he has poured his heart and soul into (the soul that society has deemed nonexistent), and takes it with him without another word.  As the two are driving away, down an empty road in the dark, Tommy asks Kathy to stop the car.  He lets out a tragic, tortured cry, like he did as a child, and Kathy holds him comfortingly.

This series of events had me in tears.  The question then arises: Why don't they leave?  There they are, on the open road, no one to stop them.  Why not flee for their lives?  There is never an answer.  Were they brainwashed into subservience in this regard?  Genetically altered?  Why don't they fight?In the end, as Kathy stands outside the window of Tommy's hospital room, and watches him die during his last donation...how does she just stand there and let it happen?  Even if it seems hopeless, why doesn't she fight to save him?  Again, we are given no answer.  Just like we never know why Tommy let Ruth claim him for all those years when Kathy was the one he loved.

Kathy watches as Tommy makes his final Donation and Completes.

The critics may not have liked it, I don't care why not, but Tyler and I did.  We found it heartrending and thought-provoking.  I like to think that we could never become as callous as the people in the movie.  That we would never treat people like that -clone or no clone, soul or no soul.

Tommy's final Donation -a last look at Kathy.

So do the clones have souls?  What is a soul?  They feel, they love, they suffer, they create, they ponder their origins.  What are they?  In a day when cloning is now possible, it is an important question.  I have no idea.  Kathy ponders this as the movie comes to a close:

"I come here and imagine that this is the spot where everything I've lost since my childhood is washed out.  I tell myself, if that were true, and I waited long enough then a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy.  He'd wave.  And maybe call.  I don't let the fantasy go beyond that, I can't let it.  I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all.  What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save.  We all complete.  Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time."