Never Let Me Go
(2010)Carey Mulligan (An Education), Keira Knightley (Atonement) and Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) star in this sci-fi drama, an adaptation of the highly acclaimed Kazuo Ishiguro novel.... More
Ruth, Kathy and Tommy spend their childhood at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school - this is a world and time that feel familiar, but is not like anything we know. As they grow into young adults, they find themselves coming to terms with the love they feel for each other, while preparing for the haunting reality that awaits them.Hide
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Directed by Mark Romanek
Starring Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan, Charlotte Rampling, Sally Hawkins, Domhnall Gleeson, Charlie Rowe
Written by Alex Garland (based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro)
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Never Let Me Go
BY CWright wannabe
This movie was well made and looked beautiful, costumes and minimal make up were amazing but I felt the story was a bit lost..
You could say it was artsy and touchy and goes deep into the human condition but I personally thought they began storylines that ended nowhere and I got annoyed at the characters complete acceptance to their fate.
I suspect the book would be a better option as you would have more time to connect with the characters.
I wasn't bored but not as good as expected.
BY BrionyJae superstar
BY 100WordReviews superstar
BY clararar superstar
Overall, a well-cast and beautifully shot film that made me root for Carey Mulligan's character all the way, though Keira Knightly did a good job at the end to give some insight into her rather unsympathetic character. However, at the end couldn't help but feel that something was... More missing, and the way all the characters just accepted their situation was rather bizarre and impossible to relate to from the real world's perspective - I know they wanted to keep some mystique or didn't want it to turn into The Island, but there were quite a few things I'd wished they'd explained.
Would recommend this if you were looking for something slow paced and bittersweet - or if you were a fan of any of the main actors.Hide
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The Press Reviews
71%
of critics recommend.
Rotten Tomatoes Score. More reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
This is a good movie, from a masterful novel. Full Review
A beautifully realised adaptation of a profoundly affecting novel. Intelligent sci-fi provides the backdrop, while in the foreground is a trio of truly impressive performances from Mulligan, Knightley and Garfield. Full Review
This intensely English adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel is too tasteful to be scary and too contrived to be tragic WARNING: Contains spoilers Full Review
Expertly acted, impeccably photographed, intelligently written, even intermittently touching, the film is also too parched and ponderous to connect with a large audience. Full Review
Suffused in desolate sadness, Never Let Me Go is a disquieting journey through the bleak midwinter of the human soul. Full Review
Alas, what's missing is the spark of life, the jolt of the unexpected - something beyond tears - to puncture the falseness of a film world, which, by its insistence on its own beauty, obscures the tragedy that the three characters, by their nature, cannot express. Full Review
Model adaptation Full Review
Blade Runner goes to boarding school… Full Review
Never Let Me Go is that rare find, a fragile little four-leaf clover of a movie that's emotionally devastating, yet all too easily trampled by cynics. Full Review
BY Matt Glasby Flicks Writer
Whilst it nods to speculative literary sci-fi such as 1984 and A Handmaid’s Tale, Mark Romanek’s autumnal Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation has more in common with Atonement and The Go Between – elegies for an England about to be steamrollered, unknowingly, into oblivion.... More
Set in an alternative present where disease has been mysteriously eradicated, it follows Mulligan, Garfield and Knightley, three residents of a special 'preparatory' school, as their friendships bloom and wither through the years. Like WWII soldiers on the frontline, they await their preordained fates in ignorance, and the film thrums with the shell-shocked austerity of that era. "Maybe none of us really understand what we live through…" concludes Mulligan, whose astonishingly assured performance seems to draw on centuries lived out in the cold.
Lack of awareness is the key here; the protagonists’ sad little lives pivoting on misunderstandings, immature assessments of the not-so-brave new world around them, and things left unsaid. As they move from childhood straight to decrepitude, much of the drama happens at arm’s length, and the grim realities of their lab-rat existences are couched in euphemisms where, for example, death becomes "completion" and hospices "recovery centres". It's a hymn to mute incomprehension, a paean to chances missed, but so all-consuming is the characters’ emptiness it begins to deflate the entire enterprise, and the art-cinema averse will begrudge the lack of emotional release. Though sensitively assembled by talented professionals, this is a film that wants to cry, but can’t remember how.Hide
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