It is widely stated and widely agreed upon that cinematic adaptations from novels are never as good as the book. This is not a controversial statement. Novels are personal and implicit. Cinema, while being able to affect audiences on a personal level is experienced collectively. Cinema also tends to be explicit owing to its time constraints.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go was published in 2005 and shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. Six years later, Ishiguro’s novel has been adapted by director Mark Romanek and writer Alex Garland, also a celebrated author (The Beach published in 1996). Never Let Me Go tells the story of Hailsham School, located in the English countryside and home to some very unique children. Students of Hailsham are clones with the purpose of becoming donors in their adult life. They stay at Hailsham until age 18 when they are sent into the world for a brief opportunity at a ‘normal’ life before being called upon for their first donation. By their third or fourth donation, they complete; a euphemistic term for dying.
This is a topic which raises many moral and ethical questions, which do not need to be expanded upon here. What is remarkable about Ishiguro’s novel is the subtlety with which this subject is handled. The obliqueness of the future for these children is dealt with so straightforwardly that it is difficult, at first, to comprehend the esteem in which this novel is held. It is only later when the novel has really been absorbed that questions of your own mortality start to emerge and the emotion of the story, at first hidden behind a frank and uncomplicated first person narrative, is felt. The greatest achievement of this adaptation is in transferring this same experience to the screen.
Garland (a close friend of Ishiguro’s and chosen by the author to adapt his novel) makes many changes, yet keeps the novel’s three part structure. The first act at Hailsham does feel rushed and whereas in the book we are given time ourselves to discover and uncover clues as to the reason for Hailsham, the film chooses to deal with this in one brief expository scene. Yet, the changes are mostly appropriate for the switch in medium; tightening the story without losing much of what is necessary. Importantly, Romanek has cast perfectly. Carey Mulligan as the lead and narrator, Kathy, carries the weight and emotion of the story with a quiet elegance. Keira Knightley as her manipulative friend, Ruth, strikes the perfect balance between bitchiness and regret. (In the fact, the only real misstep in the adaptation is the removal of the origins behind Kathy and Ruth’s friendship at Hailsham and the calculating way in which Ruth controls Kathy and their friendship group. Including this in the early scenes would help inform the characters’ issues that arise later). Andrew Garfield (the best thing about The Social Network, 2010) is Tommy and brings so much to this character that he adds to the depiction in the novel.
Romanek and Garland’s second most significant achievement is in implicitly stating the delicate and contentious subject matter. The science-fiction element of Never Let Me Go is treated as such a commonplace matter that it never threatens to overshadow the characters and the tragic love story that slowly develops. The donations, the completions, even their purpose in being is handled with so little melodrama that when the film ends the same underwhelming feeling is experienced. The question of how much feeling do these characters really have for each other would not be out of place, but there is a deep and real emotion here. One that is unspoken, and that exists between the lines. It takes time to really appreciate the subtlety at work here. As with the novel, the weight that this story carries is in the question we ask ourselves of the value of life. Never Let Me Go is a unique and powerful love story that says far more than it appears to.
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