Alex Garland’s Most Underrated Sci-Fi Movie Was Based On A Beloved Novel

There is a strange myth in popular culture surrounding the notion of dying youth. James Dean was a fan of the phrase “Live Fast, Die Young and has a beautiful corpse”, and it turned out to be prophetic when he died in a car wreck at the age of only 24. In the world of music, Mott The Hoople has opened “all young people” with references to suicide (“don’t want to stay alive when you are 25″) and the inféeur ” “27 club” – An unofficial collection of famous people who died at 27 – presents illustrious rock stars ‘n’ roll like Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain. It is a strange mixture of tragedy and romanticism, but in reality, it fears to die at any age – especially when you are in the flower of age. The author’s winning author of the Nobel Prize, Kazuo Ishiguro, tackled this subject from a very different angle in his heartbreaking novel “Never Me Go”, which has become an underestimated science fiction film written by Alex Garland.

The Ishiguro Book was published for the first time in 2005, less than 10 years after Dolly, the sheep, made the headlines by becoming the first mammal successfully cloned. She was the only 277 attempts that went to birth and she only lived six years, which was half the life expectancy of her particular race. The breakthrough has cloned science fiction to reality and has raised many ethical concerns, especially around the question of whether scientists could (or should) reproduce humans.

Ishiguro Dolly checks Speaking of the creation of “Never Let Me Go”, in which he adopted a dark Lo-Fi approach of a dystopian tale on the cloning of humans for organ harvesting. It is not really a spoiler because Mark Romanek’s elegant adaptation of 2010 (Working from a Garland scenario) gives the mystery very early. Instead, the Garland script focuses more on how the three young protagonists in history have accepted their pre-ordered fate and try to get the most out of their allocated time. This is one of Garland’s most personal works, perhaps from his friendship with the author. The pair would discuss themes during lunch during the writing process of Ishiguro and Garland read the novel at a very early stage, putting a cinematographic version before its publication. Since then, “Never Let Me Go” has been overshadowed by Garland’s most prominent films like “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation”, which he also made. Let’s take a look at this subtle and stimulating film.

Unlike the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Romanek “don’t get me go” Spell things from the start: we are in an alternative reality where a medical breakthrough allowed people’s life expectancy to exceed 100 years. We meet Kathy H. (Carey Mulligan), a caregiver unfortunately looking at one of his donors on the point of undergoing an operation. His memories brought us back in 1978 and Hailsham, a boarding school supervised by the Stern Miss Emily (Charlotte Rampling). All of this seems quite healthy and children learn to take care of their bodies, one of the many clues that something is disabled. Among the children, we focus on Kathy (played by Isobel Meikle-Small in his youth) and his friends Ruth (Ella Purnell, growing in Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Charlie Rowe / Andrew Garfield). The latter is a simple boy subject to crises of rage who have a natural affection for Kathy, but a jealous Ruth is part of them and becomes the girlfriend of Tommy.

The children discover the truth of their situation when Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins) tells them that they were raised as organ donors and that their goal is to die young in order to save the lives of others. Except in this process of cloning humans for organ harvesting, they do not use the word “die”. “Complete” clones, generally after three or four donations. In upheaval, their reaction is a slight disappointment.

The rest of the film follows Kathy, Ruth and Tommy as young adults that they are allowed in the world to enjoy life for a few years before starting their gifts. Ruth and Tommy are still together and Kathy applies to become a caregiver, who will postpone her own gifts while she offers comfort to donors. Years later, his path crosses again with his old friends, who both started the process. The weather is short, but there are rumors of a postponement program for couples who can prove that they are really in love …

“Never Let Me Go” leave most of the science fiction elements in the background, an appropriate choice because Ishiguro was only worried about cloning like a plot for its story of three students whose life was intended to end prematurely. From the author’s own admission, the novel tries to have them in both directions, offering a edifying story and a metaphor affirming life to make the most of the time we have allocated. The film has the same strengths and weaknesses.

“Never Let Me Go” is a beautifully shot film that deliberately evokes nostalgia for a very specific type of English. It is a retro world of boarding school, rustic chalets and seaside towns slightly oriented towards dogs, and everything is just little disabled; The segment of the 1970s is more like a period drama of the 1950s, and the chapter of the 90s looks more like the 80s. It is an intelligent choice, taking us to this half -imagined England from the past where everyone has kept a steep upper lip and no one liked growling. It is like a dystopian extension of the themes explored in the previous novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, “The remains of the day” (and the Version of the underestimated film with Anthony Hopkins), in which the characters are imprisoned in a buttoned social structure where they are unable to fully express their emotions.

Something similar is happening in “Never Let Me Go”. My first reaction was: “Why don’t they try to escape?” But that’s not how people do things in the world of Ishiguro, and it’s all the more scary for that. The escape has never even crossed their mind. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy passively accept their fate because they are indoctrinated by a system where they grew up by being said that being donor is the only reason for their existence. In addition, they had quite well – we get clues that Hailsham is the exception and that other schools are hardly more than battery farms, making a comparison with animated ill -treatment for food. All that our young protagonists can do is to get the most out of things and try not to complain.

The picturesque style makes the horror of the situation all the more insidious and omnipresent. It certainly would not have the same effect if it was all the holograms and flying cars. In this alternative world, everyone has come to accept harvest clones for spare parts as part of daily life, including the clones themselves. This is a dark situation and the film remained with me for a long time, although my main reproach is that our central trio does not give enough joy and passion to successfully balance the edifying story with “supposed life” is what you do “.” Never let me go “is a quietly powerful film that offers a lot of material for reflection – I just want it a little more to move the heart and the soul.