NEVER LET ME GO

An adaptation too similar to its source material.

68/100

Original Release: 2010

Directed by: Mark Romanek

Written by: Alex Garland

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley

Favourite Quote:

“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.”

Favourite Shot:

The best film adaptations manage to elevate, or at least accurately represent, the source material through a different medium. This usually creates a few different approaches. Two common ones include having an interpretation of the film and framing your movie entirely through that (See: The Shining).

And another is to try and create the same feelings and vibe of the material through the visual medium, which often means changing things in the story so that they work better visually (See: Cloud Atlas). If you’re going to recreate the source material word for word, then why wouldn’t the audience just stick with that?

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is an intricate exploration of the human condition. It is heartbreaking, gentle and nostalgic. And Mark Romanek’s film of the same name is also all of these things. But it fails to have the same impact and adds little to the experience of reading the original text.

Never Let Me Go is a movie that stays too true to its source material. It differs only slightly from the superior experience of reading the novel. But it has to be taken into account that not everyone has read the novel, meaning that this is the only way some audiences have experienced this intricate story. And it is certainly a story that must be experienced.

Written by Alex Garland, Never Let Me Go follows Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and her friends Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley) who all attend boarding school together. As the movie progresses there is an overwhelming sense that something about the kids, and the way they are treated, at the boarding school is off. And soon it is revealed that they are all clones created to give up their organs and die.

Ishiguro’s text has the freedom to jump around in time as it pleases. Dropping in and out of different phases of the three main characters’ lives. This strengthens the themes of memory and nostalgia, and explores the certain things we remember, what we remember about them and whether our memories can be trusted.

While the film is mainly presented in chronological order meaning that this theme, which is highly impactful in the novel, is not as prevalent and explored in such detail.

Garland’s script also has to combat time. Meaning that we don’t get to spend as much time in places as the book does. The parts written about their time in the boarding school is delicate and melancholic. And makes you want to stay there forever.

Whereas in the film it feels like no time has passed before we are onto the next stage of their life. Obviously limited time is one of the biggest challenges for adaptations, but there are ways around it. And it feels as if the way Garland has approached this is to take out anything that doesn’t feel too important to the story and keep everything else.

But this tactic is purely a storytelling approach and means you don’t get that same nostalgic, timeless feel that the novel gives to their time at the boarding school. And it also means we don’t get to spend as much time developing the friendship between Kathy and Ruth. Meaning that there are times where you wonder why they are even hanging out at all.

The whole stretch near the end of the movie is the highlight. Heartbreaking scene after heartbreaking scene. They all reunite and walk down to an abandoned boat. Knightley’s character finally lets everything out, giving Kathy and Tommy one last hope at life. The heart-rending meeting with the old Hailsham teachers. Garfield’s tear jerking breakdown in the middle of the road.

And then the ending with Kathy narrating about a field she goes to, where she imagines everything she has lost in her life has washed up. And then she says what is probably the only thing not in the book which Garland has added. And it is quite frankly one of the best parts of the film.

She says: “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.”

Never Let Me Go is a movie that stays too true to its source material. It differs only slightly from the superior experience of reading the novel. But it has to be taken into account that not everyone has read the novel, meaning that this is the only way some audiences have experienced this intricate story. And it is certainly a story that must be experienced.

The film definitely has its moments though and its third act is a must see. It just would’ve been a much better experience if Garland had been more creative in translating the book to the screen.