Review by Spencer Gordon
Photo provided by Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go
Directed by Mark Romanek
Starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightley
Rated R for some sexuality and nudity
Carey Mulligan (An Education) is one of those actresses that has the ability to become the next Meryl Streep (Doubt, Sophie’s Choice); everything she acts in will probably get an Oscar nomination, and Never Let Me Go is no exception. Mulligan provides a solid performance as the distraught Ruth who is in love with Tommy (Andrew Garfield, The Social Network). Unfortunately, Tommy is with Ruth’s best friend Kathy (Keira Knightley, Atonement) leaving Ruth to only long for Tommy’s affection. Sounds like a stereotypical romance film doesn’t it? Well not quite.
I won’t give away the film’s big secret despite the fact you’ll know it within the first 30 minutes.The secret is a great idea on paper … literally. Never Let Me Go, the book, is said to be one of the greatest novels of the decade. Unfortunately, screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later) and director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) couldn’t transfer the magic of the book onto the screen.
The film is in two parts; the beginning is the gang growing up in a type of boarding school, then about the last two thirds of the film is the gang grown up and moved out of the school. The child actors all acted with no emotion whatsoever. I couldn’t help but think of Michael C. Hall’s early Dexter character and how he doesn’t really have emotions either. This made the shift from focusing on emotionless kids to over emotional adults a weird one.
The main argument against the film is the way it handled its secret. The film decided to focus more on the love triangle that personally I didn’t find very appealing instead of the secret that could potentially be a movie of its own. So many film love triangles spiral into clichés with the characters breaking through the same roadblocks. Even with the secret looming, almost unbelievably, the characters would focus all of their energy into their own drama.
Like I said before, Mulligan is great. I also loved seeing Garfield again after watching him in The Social Network, but his performance here is not nearly as good. For example, during what is the supposed climax of the film Garfield’s childhood problems resurface and he begins screaming uncontrollably. Instead of feeling for the character, all I could think about was that the screenwriter wanted this scene so badly, so he made Garfield’s character have problems as a child in order to have it.
This film had a lot of potential but unfortunately fell flat. I was looking forward to it because of the great leads, but after watching I just wish the crew behind the camera was as talented as the actors on screen.
Grade: C- for a slow and sloppy script, and for disregarding an interesting concept to favor a stereotypical love triangle.
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