“Never Let Me Go” — Movie Review

Never Let Me Go is my favourite film of 2010, hands down. – Review by Joel

Never Let Me Go is a film about love. I’d say it’s about death, but that would suggest that love isn’t always, in some way, about death and loss:

The context in which love is experienced is the knowledge that it will one day be lost.

I won’t say too much more about the themes or plot because knowing too much will only prepare you for the end. And it would be an insult to the characters in some way, I think, to have steeled yourself against what you will experience in the last act.

You will cry. Or at least want to. As the credits rolled no one in the theater made a motion to move, as if the slightest disturbance might shatter everyone’s constitution at once.

This is no Notebook. This is a plausible narrative that makes you sad because of how the world actually works, or could.

You will wonder, however briefly, whether it’s ever really worth loving anyone.

Never Let Me Go was easily missed during its theatrical run (who is the audience for this sort of tragedy?), but you should absolutely pick it up when it is released on DVD on February 1st.

So why should you watch it? Because it is an amazingly well written, directed, and acted film about a series of thoughts and feelings that have never been expressed this well before.

Starring:
Carey Mulligan (also fantastic in An Education)
Andrew Garfield (from The Social Network, and soon to be Spider-man)
Keira Knightley (the “big name” in the film, but you really do forget it’s her)