Film Review: Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go is a curious film which almost defies classification. Although technically a sci-fi movie, it plays out more like a combination of quaint period drama and coming of age flick.

Set in an imagined Britain where medical advances have led to the rampant cloning of human beings from which organs are harvested for transplants, the film begins in 1978 at Hailsham, a splendorous countryside boarding school. Here we are introduced to our three protagonists, students Kathy, Tommy and Ruth. From Hailsham we follow the trio as they reach adulthood and lose touch, only for their lives to collide back into one another a decade later.

The first act, set at Hailsham, is perhaps the most impressive, featuring fantastic performances from a young cast. Isobel Meikle-Small delivers a stunning performance as an adolescent Kathy while Charlie Rowe brings an adorable awkwardness and innocence to the role of Tommy – traits which Andrew Garfield mimics perfectly as he carries them forward into Tommy's adulthood.

It's clear from early on that something isn't quite right about Hailsham. The atmosphere is subdued, as are the children who live in fear of the outside world, traumatized by gruesome stories of students who stepped outside the gate and wound up dead. When outsider Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins) joins Hailsham as a teacher and begins asking questions, it is through her that we discover the children's fate.

The wider world remains alien to the students even in adulthood, as they are sent to live in remote farm cottages and care homes. It remains alien to the audience too. Characters speak occasionally about a society which refuses to return to the dark days of widespread cancer and organ failure, accepting the premature deaths of 'donors' on the basis that they're clones and therefore can't have souls. As a viewer it is frustrating not to see this world explored, but by remaining cut off from it we share our protagonists' sense of entrapment.

It is difficult to understand why the characters accept their fate so readily. In Michael Bay's The Island, which tackles similar themes, the characters attempt escape in order that they can live full lives. As a viewer, one spends much of Never Let Me Go waiting for Ruth, Kathy and Tommy to do the same. They're provided with ample opportunity. Every time they get in the car or go for a walk, you think you're finally going to witness the lightbulb moment where they decide that life doesn't have to be like this – but it never comes.

Ultimately, this is frustrating. There are no electric fences or armoured guard towers preventing their escape and with each wasted opportunity you feel a little less sorry for them and a little more like clouting them with a saucepan. The Hailsham alumni were raised in the knowledge that they would serve as organ farms in adulthood, but one never quite buys this as an explanation for the characters' passive acceptance of their fate.

Keira Knightley delivers one of her best performances to date as the scheming Ruth while Andrew Garfield is unerringly lovable as the wide-eyed, vulnerable Tommy - but Carey Mulligan is the real star of the show, turning in another Oscar-baiting performance as jilted narrator Kathy.

Although it is a movie about clones, it is the human themes in Never Let Me Go which will strike the biggest chord with audiences. While the characters' motivations can be difficult to fathom and the moral and ethical arguments surrounding the central theme seem under-explored, Never Let Me Go is a moving film which is sure to inspire debate about science, religion, fate, civil liberties, mortality and free will. At its core, though, it is an exploration of the relationships between three friends and a story of doomed love which will leave audiences almost as heartbroken as its characters.