T's Take on NEVER LET ME GO

I lied.

It IS okay for a movie to be depressing and unredemptive. There was nothing happy in this movie, nothing was resolved, and every character here starts out with a lot and ends with only a little. It's about people being bred to donate organs to everyone else. Big business has taken to cloning, and these people are trained and forced to submit to the surrendering of their vitals one piece at a time until creeping inevitable death ceases to linger over their heads, much to the hasty delight of the operating teams that hover around them throughout their adult lives like vultures. It's sick, and depraved, and a hideous reflection of humanity and values.

I loved it. It moved me. It was gorgeous and provocative and a multiple of everything I wanted it to be. I'd recommend it to anyone.

So what's the difference between this and Great Expectations? I guess it has something to do with the message. Expectations' message was that everything sucks, and sometimes you just have to loose, because you're a looser. And the everybody hates you. And as difficult as it might be for you to believe, the people you love are secretly out to get you. Here? This movie? This is done for a reason. Here we find human, believable characters living out destitute shadows of lives for a reason. Not to say that the in-movie organ farming is legitimate reason, but the statement that makes about medicine and technology is powerful.

This is a warning. At least, that's how I took it. The author of the book is cautioning us to value life wherever we find it, because if we don't, or can't, the lives we're looking to prolong cease to matter. We, the willing beneficiaries of that death and suffering, are become monsters. That vampiric visage of that alternate humanity must be avoided at all costs. Very important. Very striking. The fact that the movie starts in the seventies and moves into a present that does not exist is important. Instead of moving forward and showing a horrific destiny, it says, 'what if this had happened?', offering the viewer respite from a point of view that is indeed depressing, but not altogether bleak. By assuring us that it is not real now, we know this as a story, and not a depiction of the future, although the intonations are definitely there.

Casting, directing, screenplay, whatever... Tens all around. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Maybe not great for a first date or a lazy Sunday afternoon, but important, and a must-see.

Watch Never Let Me Go.