MovieChat Forums > Never Let Me Go (2010) Discussion > The only thing more unbelievable about t...

The only thing more unbelievable about this movie than...

posted 10 years ago by starrychloe
12 replies | jump to latest

The only thing more unbelievable about this movie than medical technology that's three times as advanced as any other technology is the fact that they never tried to escape, or even question their role. The Island was 10x better. Even actively beaten, closely watched slaves tried to escape in 12 Years a Slave. These sheep had free range of the entire country, access to all literature and ideas, yet they never considered trying to leave or get out. I don't know how they created them to be so compliant, but these people are no better than livestock. Even if they produce art, they don't have a soul in this movie. Every child rebels. To think they won't is beyond belief. I gave it a 2.

[–] cpmorr 10 years ago

Remember the boy that was afraid to go after ball beyond the fence, then when asked why told the gruesome story about the boy that did? I infer that they had programmed to believe that the outside world was a place to be feared and that you entered it at your risk.

[–] dangitau25 10 years ago

but when they're older they can basically go wherever they want. especially carers.

I am a God

[–] morganseer 9 years ago

but when they're older they can basically go wherever they want. especially carers
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I don't think they can. They have a range to move around in, bu I think they have to stick close to the hospital that will eventually harvest them. At least they always have to be reachable. But where can one run without an ID? How can one live? Where would someone who knows no one in the outside world go to forge documents and invent a new life?

[–] Samus Aran 10 years ago

Why do most people not switch religions as adults, after being imprinted as children?

Whatever a child learns in the first few years of life is imprinting, i.e. hypnosis. It is very difficult to unlearn what you learned in those imprinting years, as an adult or teen. Most never will, and this was a story about just one group. Surely some individuals in some group did try to flee, but with no practical survival skills, they would be tracked down in no time, and surely death would be the punishment (though it wasn't stated). Just because this story was not about someone that ran away, doesn't mean nobody in that society ran away -- you're inferring way too much with that.

They were running things as a full-on brainwashing system, exactly like the Residential Schools used against local aboriginals via colonisation around the globe. They teach them hard during the early years, teaching them they are not human, not worth the same as the real citizens, etc. and this sticks... for generations. Look no further than reality if you want to know how these things play out.

This movie was portrayed extremely realistically in terms of the social aspects. Obviously the medical tech was a few decades ahead of schedule, but that was the actual sci-fi premise for the movie.

[–] arcangel_pop 8 years ago

that's true

[–] HairynosedWombat 10 years ago

The essence of the best science fiction is the suspension of disbelief about some aspects so as to explore more deep and meaningful themes.

Of course there are aspects of this story which are unbelievable, including cloning itself, which is currently unable to replicate the perfection of these children. The important thing is the themes of friendship, the nature of humanity and the soul and sacrifice.

One might compare this film to (say) Gravity, where we are asked to suspend disbelief in their demolition of basic physics for an exploration of what? CGI?

In his cloak of words strode the ringmaster

[–] bearowl-1 9 years ago

Where would they escape to? They had no families or homes. They had no other identities.

[–] TheDarkKnightMatter 9 years ago

Of course op will post and never reply, but some captives are scared to leave. It's called Stockholm syndrome. Some captives experience a mental disorder that they can not live without their captors. There's the case in Ohio with Ariel Castro, where the victim didn't want to escape.

https://mic.com/articles/40305/stockholm-syndrome-was-it-the-reason-it-took-amanda-berry-so-long-to-escape#.CNVZDe7WW

State champ in martial arts, trained with firearms, I eFF'n dare you!

[–] bladesman2 9 years ago

Rather than attempting guesswork about the psychological imprinting done on them, I'd rather see their acceptance for their fate as metaphorical. Summed up neatly at the end of the film is the idea that they aren't so different - all men must die. It's a notion also explored by Sartre (best in his short story The Wall). It's when we become aware or reach acceptance of our inescapable mortality that existence itself becomes absurd. Underlying his other works is that, once we accept the absurdity, we are not forced merely to fall into existential despair. We have no reason not to embrace the absurd and enjoy what we can of our short time.

As a philosophical point, we're forced to ask ourselves why is it absurd that they accept their existence simply because they know the expiration date? Is their experience less meaningful because we know how fleeting it is?

None of us will get "enough" time to fulfil our love or ambition. What this film does is create a circumstance in which that is expressed by characters whom have been forced to accept such notions of mortality. If anything, the love they share is only more powerful once they become fully aware of its inevitable end.

So why do the characters accept their fate? The same reasons we accept our own.

[–] arcangel_pop 8 years ago

deep answer ....wow
thank u

[–] yadichan 8 years ago

The truly unbelievably part of this movie is that they have reached the technological level needed for perfect cloning and they waste resources raising and feeding people instead of just growing organs in a lab.

[–] kellycallie (728) 7 years ago

They were more than likely micro chipped.