Movie Review: <em>Never Let Me Go</em>

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by KYW's Bill Wine --

It's an alternate universe, but one that feels strangely familiar.

That's the twentieth-century world presupposed in the unusually elegant Never Let Me Go (the imperfect title refers to a pop tune that figures in), a science fiction-ish drama about Hailsham Academy in England that's set from the late seventies through the mid-nineties but that seems altogether timeless.

This seemingly idyllic and very isolated private boarding school sits in the English countryside, where residing students are brought up for reasons that will remain unarticulated here, just as they have always been at Hailsham.
The romantic triangle that runs through Never Let Me Go involves three of those students, whom we meet as youngsters.  Later, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are played as sort-of grownups by Carey Mulligan (left), Keira Knightley (right), and Andrew Garfield, respectively.

The tweens stay sheltered inside Hailsham's fences because of the horror stories that Miss Emily, the headmistress (Charlotte Rampling), and other faculty members tell them about what could happen if they venture outside the school's grounds.

Then one day one of their sympathetic teachers, a Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), reveals a number of secrets to her students: she tells them exactly why they are here and what makes them special and why their health is so crucial and why they have been kept so mysteriously cut off from mainstream society.

The next day Miss Lucy is summarily dismissed.

The ever-cooperative children passively accept their fate as described.  But years later, when they know enough about themselves to want to deviate from the path they have been placed on, they learn that only those who can demonstrate that they are in a truly loving relationship can alter their harsh destinies.  But just who will that be?

Kathy (who narrates the tale) has always yearned for Tommy, but, although he has reciprocal feelings for her, he instead has gotten romantically involved with Ruth.  So Kathy continues to keep her desires to herself.

Director Mark Romanek -- who helmed the impressively creepy Robin Williams 2002 suspense thriller, One Hour Photo -- exhibits impressive discipline and control, and gives this precious and poetic piece considerable sadness and dread.  But his narrative could use more juice.

Unfortunately, in its ambitious exploration of just what it means to be human and how we humans deal with the hands that we're dealt, the screenplay by Alex Garland, based on the 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (who wrote The Remains of the Day), is on the stubborn side: certain connections and explanations are omitted, and encounters and catharses that we yearn for are denied us, which keeps this consistently interesting, handsome production from grabbing and affecting us even more.  The delicate film seems to cater to its own fragility while we wait impatiently for a break from the understandable bleakness.  So, yes, this one's easier to admire than embrace.

But the performances, in what is not exactly an actors' movie, are nonetheless credible and appropriate, especially the remarkably expressive and sympathetic Mulligan, who underplays and still manages to make us feel her disappointment and elation without a lot of histrionic fuss.

So we'll isolate 3 stars out of 4 for a measured and haunting fable about love and selflessness that may be   understated to a fault, but that offers itself up nimbly as a muted, meditative metaphor about mortality. 

Never Let Me Go never lets itself go, but it's still not so easy to let go of.