Recently I watched the movie “Never Let Me Go” directed by Mark Romanek, starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Nightley. I don’t remember why I chose this movie specifically. Maybe it was because it was suggested on the recommendation bar of a certain website. I already new the outline of the movie before watching for two reasons. First, the movie was adapted from the famous eponym novel from Kazuo Ishiguro (who later was awarded the nobel prize of literature). Though I did not read the book, I had already heard of it on radio program that dealt with philosphical analyses. The second reason why I already knew of the outline of the movie was because I had read “The Promised Neverland” which is a manga that freely adapts Ishiguro’s work.

“Never Let Me Go” follows Kathy and two of her friends as they grow up. The story could be broken down into three parts, the first one unfolds during childhood in an orphanage, the second part during teenage years in a cottage, the third one as grown ups in separate locations. In the first part, three friends are raised in Hailsham, an English orphanage, by strict sisters at the beginning of the 20th century. The ordinary upbringing is tempered with every now and then by subtle details that seem a little bit exagerated but don’t raise concern. For instance, in the first scene children are told off to watch over their health carefully after a lit cigarett was found on the campus. The spectator learns later with the children that they were raised by the sisters for a specific purpose. In fact, they live to donate their organs to people…until they can’t anymore.

What can be appalling in this movie is how passive all the characters in the movie accept their fate as organ donors. You could think that during the cottage part, all friends could find a way to escape as they are free to live as they wish and are even able to drive to the nearest city to live a normal life. What the movie shows is that, in the end, the strongest prison to stop a person is to create the barriers in his head. It reminds me of this image of the elephant in a circus, if you raise it with a chain attached to its feet, it will be afraid to escape or rebel even when he is strong enough to break chains as he grows up.

Surprisingly, I realized half way through the movie how it reminded of a manga I read a few months ago call “The Promised Neverland” from Kaiu Shirai. Indeed both stories start in an orphanage where children are raised in a dreamy environment by a doting mother. In the same way as “Never Let Me Go”, everything in the upbringing of the children seem to benefit the children themselves as they are encouraged to practice physical exercises, learn lessons, grow up healthfully. The spectator will be startled when she will discover with the orphans the awful truth that they are raised for a sacrificial purpose as well. Indeed at some point, the children figure out that, when a child leaves the orphanage to be adopted, it is to be eaten by otherworldly creatures (called “deamons” by the children). But this is all there is in terms of similarity between the two works. While Ishiguro’s characters are portrayed as yound adults who have been brainwashed since their childhoods in a realistic way, Shirai’s characters are blessed with singular cleverness and free will (although the situation is not reached by chance). Thus Emma and her friends use brillant brains to plot crafty schemes against the system. I won’t dive into too much details of “The Promised Neverland” because it would take another post.

At some point I asked myself the following question: ‘If I had to be born in one of the two worlds, which one would I prefer? Being raised as a living organ donor for other humans as in “Never Let Me Go” or being raised as human meat for deamons to feast upon as in “The Promised Neverland”?’ At first, I thought that to be in born “Never Let Me Go” was the better option because you still end up dying for the benefit of someone else who will be able to live significantly longer, whereas in the the second case your purpose in life is to be eaten by a monster whose nature is unfathomable. But I changed my mind later with the following thinking: the children of the “The Promised Neverland” are imprisoned and monitored in the orphanage, but they still try to break free from the chains that the orphanage put on them. Second, what struck me in “Never Let Me Go” was the very fact that humans are the one who chose to sacrifice the children in order to enhance their lifetimes artificially. And this fact is what makes it much more desparate that “The Promised Neverland” which features monsters who need human meat to survive and thus don’t do it to selfishly live beyond what is natural.

I quite enjoyed both works. I think that watching both allowed me to grasp ideas that would not have come to mind otherwise. It’s quite amusing how fictional stories that are set up in an unrealistic initial environment have the spector relate to so many concepts and think about her own life condition. Even though we are not raised in the same manner and for the exact same purpose as Kathy or Emma, there are some aspects of our lives that are manipulated by people and every human is certainely tied by invisible chains just like the children from Hailsham and Gracefield but in even more subtle ways.

From an artistic point of view, the first-class casting and fantastic directing made it a breeze to follow Kathy and her friends endure trials. The directing and setup of the movie reminded me of the excellent English movie “Far from the Madding Crowd” which starred Carey Mulligan as well. What I recognize in these two works besides the leading role is the how the British landscape is filmed in a way that the spectator experiences viridescent & golden dreamlike scenes from another world. Contrary to Woody Allen’s artificially excited light from New York in “A Rainy Day in New York” (which I liked still), “Never Let Me Go” shines from a natural and peaceful golden glow warming delicately the look on the face of its characters.

Finally, I confess that I was bewitched by Carey Mulligan once again. Somehow, two scenes left a profound impression on me, the first one is Kathy’s unreal appearance in a forest glade, she is sitting and expecting something that will never come. The second scene depicts Kathy standing at dusk in front of a deserted countryside landscape and looking in the distance. As she reflects back on her life, she comes to a decisive and powerful conclusion as to how to live her life from here on, as someone who knows that her existence is not hers to chose and never will. In a sense, in this movie that relates the lifetime of people that are raised to serve others, Kathy might paradoxically be the character that was the closest to real freedom, even more than her stranded friends and the sisters at the orphanage.

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