In a vaguely dystopian alternative present (Never Let Me Go opens in 1978 and ends approximately now), a bunch of uncanny little children grow up cloistered in an austere English boarding school called Hailsham. They’re told they’re “special,” encouraged to make art and keep their bodies healthy, and corralled safely within the grounds by legends of gruesome murderers lurking just beyond the walls. “How do you know they’re true?” asks a newly arrived teacher who is totally about to blow the lid off this bitch. The children can barely fathom the existence of the question. “Of course they’re true! Who’d make up stories as horrible as that?” Every once in a while, a couple of men with a truck full of broken garbage show up and the kids flock to “buy” things with creepy little good-behavior tokens. It is all very not quite right.
The secret is that the Hailsham kids are clones created by the government from the tissue of ne’er-do-wells in order to provide organ transplants (“donations”) for nonclones with janky livers and such. After graduation, they’re sent out into the world—free-range clone kidneys!—where they’re welcome to eat sandwiches, play soccer, look at porn, and fall in love for a couple of years before they die of not-having-lungs.
The story concerns three young Hailsham graduates—Keira Knightley (gauntly villainous), Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man!), and Carey Mulligan (awwwww)—struggling with the cognitive dissonance of being told you are not a person. The sci-fi setup sleeps unobtrusively behind the action—the clone stuff is just a means to get to novelist Kazuo Ishiguro’s message. Never Let Me Go is really a story about friendship and jealousy and the cool ease with which humans dehumanize each other out of self-interest. It’s a beautiful, sad, riveting movie.
HOWEVER. Some questions. You expect me to believe that there wouldn’t be a clone-people civil rights movement before the ink was even dry on this cuckoo legislation? Is this a British stiff-upper-lip thing? Come on, clone people! Tip over a Dumpster or whatever you call it! The government is literally about to KILL YOU. Second of all, instead of having science invent human cloning to keep organs fresh for needy patients, why not just put them to work on a REALLY, REALLY GOOD REFRIGERATOR? Last time I checked, actual human people die all the time. Like literally all the time. Pro tip: USE THOSE ORGANS. Third of all, this is a ridiculously expensive program funded by my tax dollars. If I know anything about white people (not to brag, but I am kind of an expert), they would obviously get some poor brown people from some other continent for this shit! Come on!
But like I said, the story isn’t the point. The message is the point. People are people. Legalize gay marriage. 
Your liver and right kidney. Drink plenty of water Lindy. I got dibs just so you know. Sleep tight.
So, basically, this is a Brit redo of that Yank film where everyone was clones raised as replacement parts for their “owners”.
That had romance too.
Like literally all the time.
Awe, this was actually a really creepy and heartbreaking book. I liked it a lot.
Part of the problem for US viewers is that the book, and hence the movie, have a very Japanese feel. We would never let ourselves submit to such a life, so we rebel against the construct on the screen in a way that Asian viewers never would.
Still epic, nonetheless.
Lindy, I love you so hard.
<3
Why would they breed them so pretty? It’d be way easier for the public to stomach parting out uglies. I guess it’s so people, um, see the movie.
@5 – yeah, Asian over here, and trust me, the idea of breeding people for body parts freaks us out too.
But what do I know, I’m just another mindless brown cog in the teeming billions of Asians that clearly never question anything anybody comes up with, right?
Speaking of, I read The Handmaid’s Tale the other day! How come you North Americans don’t question that construct? We would never let ourselves submit to such a life.
While I haven’t seen the movie, one of the best parts of the book was the fact that, other than using the terms “donor” and “carer”, no mention is made of the children’s fate until you’re already significantly invested in the characters. And when it is mentioned, it’s done in such an understated way that you’re almost shocked at how much it’s not a big deal.
In other words: could you please tag this post as “spoiler alert”, and not include said spoilers in the RSS feed for Slog?
I know it sounds like a little thing… I just feel like I would have appreciated the book a lot less if I had known about the whole organ thing from page 1.
Are you saying this movie is actually better than the MST3K episode “Parts, the Clonus Horror”? I shant believe it.
Hey Will in Seattle,
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan but spend most of his childhood and adulthood in England. If you’ve read any of his other books – Remains of the Day, anyone? – his characters and the writing tend to keep their emotional distance from the reader. And it’s about an ENGLISH BUTLER. How English can you get? If anything, I think he’s part robot.
Seconding #9, I appreciate it would have been hard to review without spoiling the book, but a spoiler tag would have been nice.
I haven’t read the book, but I think I might. And when I get to the part where the secret is revealed, I’ll think only of you, Lindy.
@8, @11 — Will in Seattle’s overarching racism has been established here many, many times. Asians = interchangeable job-stealing robots; Latin Americans = dirty, desperate job-stealing smugglers; Muslims (of any race) = bomb-throwing terrorists. Basically in his world view the subtleties of human differences really only begin to be discernible when you get within 100 miles of Nazi Germany.
yeah, love it…go see this movie, it’s awesome! ps – here is every detail about the end right up front
so yeah, thanks for that….here’s an awesome movie! you will love it!! especially the part where (fill in every detail about the end without the benefit of character development) happens! please = spoiler alert tag
@8 … The Handmaid’s Tale … that’s what the Republicans want for this country so it isn’t so hard to believe
Third to #9 and #12. The revelation is a profound moment and for those who would care to experience that, I think, deserve a warning before reading a paragraph that lays it all on the table. And now it’s quoted on the front page, too…
Fourth…I realize you might have had to abandon your well flexed humour (see what I did there?) muscles to write a serious, spoiler free review, but doesn’t this story deserve it?
Fourth…I realize you might have had to abandon your well flexed humour (see what I did there?) muscles to write a serious, spoiler free review, but doesn’t this story deserve it?
@9, @12 and @17: I saw the movie and, trust me, the “revelation” is not a spoiler. The film is NOT all about a surprise twist a la “Sixth Sense.” The characters are informed that they are, basically, clones within the first 20 minutes or so. The film is about how these three people deal with the inevitabiility of their lives. It is VERY moving and lovely, and knowing the small details that Lindy conveyed will in no way impair your appreciation for the film.
@20 – it’s a spoiler for the book.
Will@2: um, no. It’s a film version of a novel that was written before “The Island” came out, in another country, on another continent, by someone with no connection at the time to hollywood. Also, it was good, unlike “The Island”, which sucked.
But thanks for playing.
dash@14-15: really, if your experience of the book or the movie turned on the SURPRISE!!! of what the Hailsham children were, then you missed the point entirely.
@13 – I’m beginning to see that, yes. Good gods, the man’s insane. That, and he manages to call being bred for body parts an “Asian way of life”, when not six comments earlier he was commenting on it being a bad remake of The Island (is Scarlett Johansson white enough for him, I wonder?). So much for it being inconceivable to a western audience.
@16 – well, yeah, there is that. I’m not saying any country’s without its dumbfuck regressionists, I live in the local regressionist hq and am slightly nervous about this most of the time, but half your political system being skewed that way is a tad creepy.
@5
What the fuck are you talking about?
@8, 11
Thank you for housing this idiot. Beautifully.
@Lindy
You fucking rock. Awesome review. You’re a brilliant, hilarious writer. Keep it up!
Damn Obamacare
I am baffled by your positive review, and the many respectable critics who agree with you. This movie was terrible. At no time did I give a single shit about any of the characters…none of them acted like actual people. They were so resigned to their fate; no living thing, cloned or uncloned, would accept the harvesting of their vital organs so matter-of-factly. The love triangle at the center of the film is so bizarrely muted and without passion…apparently, all it took was Knightley’s underbite to keep the two fated lovers apart for a couple decades.
Every time Mulligan cries, which she does no less than four times, it’s that awful movie crying where there is no real sobbing, or even a change of expression…just leaky eyes in which somebody off-camera dripped a few drops. Nobody in the film has a true and genuine emotion ever, and thus it’s impossible to feel anything other than detached admiration at the lovely English landscapes. The one big emotional moment, if you want to call it that, when Spider-Man yells at the top of his lungs outside the car, was given away in the preview, for Christ’s sake! Not that it matters; after all that precedes it, the scene has zero impact, and actually feels a little desperate, as if the filmmakers spliced in some footage at the last second in the cutting room when they realized what a dead fish they had on their hands.
It’s completely inert and drama-free. And romance-free. And interest-free. There is no plot. They’re clones, they’re going to die, and then they die. The last hour of the film would be a horrendous slog if you remotely cared about anybody in the film (which, I suppose, makes me grateful I didn’t).
After it was over, my wife and I tried to spin it differently; maybe they intended the characters to be inhuman. Perhaps that was the point; we actually shouldn’t feel bad about harvesting their organs, since the clones are so obviously devoid of real human motivations (why don’t they ever just try and get away, for Christ’s sake???). But we were just reaching, grasping for something that would give the money and time investment some meaning.
In conclusion, Never Let Me Go sucks, and if it gets nominated for Best Picture, I’ll fly down to LA and throw hand grenades at the Kodak Theater until it’s nothing but a steaming pile of rubble.
Get that spoiler off the front page of The Stranger!