MovieChat Forums > Never Let Me Go (2010) Discussion > Don't get hung up on the organ harvestin...

Don't get hung up on the organ harvesting

posted 11 years ago by latour-4
6 replies | jump to latest

It seems like most people are so turned off by the premise that they are unable to examine the story beyond this aspect. It's rather ironic.

I was able to find a book review that touches on the deeper meaning of the story as I'm too lazy to write it all myself :)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3638242/A-sinister-harvest.html

I'll quote the concluding paragraph:

Gradually, it dawns on the reader that Never Let Me Go is a parable about mortality. The horribly indoctrinated voices of the Hailsham students who tell each other pathetic little stories to ward off the grisly truth about the future - they belong to us; we've been told that we're all going to die, but we've not really understood.

I think if the movie is approached with this understanding it becomes far more meaningful. I'd certainly be willing to elaborate if there is any interest in this discussion.

[–] mark5000910 11 years ago

I can see what you're getting at, but this film didn't do it for me. This over-arching moral question ought to have been pursued. As someone who is terminally ill, this is important to me and at the forefront of my mind at the moment. Hence my interest!

The cast was fantastic, but the sepia film colouring and soothing soundtrack just made it all too gentle and didn't explain the basic plot hole - why didn't they run away or refuse the transplants.

There was no sense of an over-bearing Orwellian State with a heavy, violent police force. No sign of the massive Govt. bureaucracy necessary to track and recall the donors. (It would have to be organised along the lines of the Nazi police state, surely?

I enjoyed sitting through the film (bathing in the beautiful scenery, acting and soundtrack), but won't return in a hurry!

[–] latour-4 11 years ago

Because viewed as a parable about human mortality, it becomes obvious that there is no "escape". It is something that we learn to accept...or not. Either way we will all die.

Everything that the children are told is important by their teachers at Hailsham...the art, the rummage sale, their being special...is really a distraction from the cold fact of their impending deaths.

The characters try to escape their fate in the only ways they know how. Tommy creates a portfolio of art hoping for a deferral. Kathy throws herself into her role as a carer. Ruth spins stories about her future that she knows will never happen.

Thanks to medical technology, we can have our twilight days drawn out (via the "procedures" in the story) which might be more painful than a quick decisive death.

The feeling that I got from the soundtrack and the cinematography is melancholy and regret.

The children at the school are meant to parallel adults at their work. We spend our days trying to please our employers, we save our tokens to buy trinkets, we keep ourselves distracted from the larger question of why we are here.

Eventually we are allowed to retire just as the teens have a period of freedom when they stay at the cottages. After some time in this in-between phase of our lives, we begin the slow deterioration that will inevitably lead to our deaths or "completion" as they call it in the story.

[–] latour-4 11 years ago

Just to reinforce this interpretation, I've found a quote from the director:

It's about the brevity of our time on the planet. And when we become aware of how briefly we're here, how do we make the best use of our time? And how do we not come to the end of our life and regret our choices? That's the film I was making. The science-fiction aspects are just a delivery system for those ideas.

Read more: Never Let Me Go: Everlasting Love - TIME http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2015774,00.html#ixzz2vr45s84u

[–] fdbjr 9 years ago

Well, that's nice, but find a less fantastic and sickening trope.

[–] denise1234 11 years ago

mark5000910^

"There was no sense of an over-bearing Orwellian State with a heavy, violent police force. No sign of the massive Govt. bureaucracy necessary to track and recall the donors. (It would have to be organised along the lines of the Nazi police state, surely?"

No need for that for, at this point, this society has reached a higher level of tyranny; a self-reinforcing one -- those who are to be sacrificed have willingly embraced their chains and fates, and the 'real' people have embraced that this is all 'okay' for the greater good.

Also, the donors were tracked via their bracelets.

~~ If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story ~ Orson Welles

[–] mlaxton-870-483612 9 years ago

What a brilliant and sad story. The clones drudged their way through life and did their bit, donating to unseen offspring, much like the rest of us so-called humans.

I am left with a mildly toughened desire to make more of my remaining time.