A mesmerizing sadness pervades the stare of Kathy as “Never Let Me Go” opens. She stands on the far side of a thick glass window watching the great love of her life Tommy being wheeled into an operating room for a procedure that they both know he will not survive. His acknowledging smile reassures her and the audience that he knows this is what is supposed to happen and he’s oddly at peace with it. It is an off-setting beginning but a proper one as the film proceeds to methodically and stoically provide the context for how these characters reached this point together.
Kathy (Carey Mulligan) Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley) have been friends from a very young age. We see moments from their childhood as students at a sprawling boarding school. The trio have an odd and evolving dynamic of love hatred and jealousy for one another. They are rich characters full of wonderfully human emotions and flaws. But they are not human. At least not in the eyes of the society that exists within the framework of the film. For despite everything else they might be Kathy Tommy and Ruth are clones; created for the sole purpose of being organ donors. And they are not alone. Every student at the boarding school and at numerous other schools like it are clones bred to give up their organs to the public so that disease can be eradicated and death put off longer.
The science fiction backdrop creates a splendid dichotomy as it clashes with the heavy and emotional plot driven by personal relationships and interactions which is highlighted masterfully with the soft beauty that is the visual style of the film. Every shot is so handled with care and nurtured with a great attention to detail that watching the film is like watching a series of paintings come to life.
In fact there hasn’t been a film in a long time that so fully embodies the idea of film as an artistic medium. Not only does it look magnificent it also raises challenging social and ethical questions in much the same way that a great work of art does. And like many of those great works of art the film purposefully avoids trying to answer those questions definitively. Yes it does present a possible resolution to its own central dramatic question but it challenges the audience to look deeper on their own. And this is what sets the film apart more than anything from the vast majority of other movies that are being released lately.
However it doesn’t matter what kind of question the film raises. It doesn’t matter what it causes you to think and debate. The simple fact that this film so successfully elicits deep emotional and intellectual responses from the audience is a triumph in itself. The evolution of that first scene in the hospital— how the meaning behind it all becomes clear throughout the rest of the movie and changes the audience’s perception of the scene when it comes back around at the end— is impossible to ignore or resist being moved by in some way.