The director of the film, Mark Romanek, made videos, filmed Madonna and Michael Jackson and other star musicians. But there is nothing in common with “clip-like” in the sense we are used to (that is, a senseless flicker of sugary beauties) in his video sequence. Rather, he will remind you of the canvases of masters from Rembrandt to Magritte.
It would seem that what is new can be said about love and death? And here you go…
“Children who have been diligently collecting tokens all this time will be rewarded tomorrow. I was promised that it would be something unprecedented,” the Headmistress (Charlotte Rampling) promises to the kids with sparkling eyes. The next day a car arrives, gloomy men unload cardboard boxes. The girls crowded at the exit, looking impatiently: “Is there really something special there?” – True true.
And now multi-colored tokens have been taken out of their hiding places, a large hall has been opened, and on the tables are laid out … broken colored crayons, bald dolls, crumpled pictures … what is being raked out of the nursery during cleaning to be sent to the trash. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie.
This time it becomes clear that the idyllic closed school Hailsham is somehow “not like that” – either when the boy does not dare to go beyond the gate to pick up a red ball with a blue stripe, whose side shines convexly in the grass very close by – or when the children sitting at the lesson carefully follow the explanations of the Headmistress, who visually depicts with the help of a human skeleton what lies on the table in front of her, how “by raising the pelvis or placing a pillow, a woman can achieve such a friction force that she needs” … The filmmakers are so skillfully and subtly lead the viewer to the idea “something is wrong here”, that there is nothing left but to take it for their own discovery – with all the accompanying symptoms: a feeling of dreary anxiety that has gradually arisen grows like an abandoned garden.
These children are unusually obedient. They keep their hands folded on the desk. Where they can’t, they don’t go. They have written on their faces trying to be the best they can be. They do not have surnames – only a first initial. Two of them – Kathy H and Tommy Dee fell in love with each other. Still at school. And they continued to love in Cottages – that is the name of the village where they live after graduating from Hailsham. They continued to love, despite the fact that Kathy’s friend Ruth “took” Tommy for herself. Tommy sleeps with Ruth and loves Katie. It happens.
By the time Tommy is finally back with Katy, it turns out that they have almost no time left, their life is rapidly flying towards the end. But a fragile hope is still alive – no, not for pardon, but at least for a reprieve …
It would seem, well, what new can be filmed on the topic of organ donation? And here you go…
This film is an adaptation of the novel. Its author Kazuo Ishiguro, he was the screenwriter of another film about love – one of the most tender, touching and hopeless – “The Remains of the Day” with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Both End of the Day and Don’t Let Me Go are very English films. Restrained, laconic, passions rage in them latently, we guess them by the cast glance, the lowered corners of the lips – or by the way the side light falls from the window. Intonation speaks more than words. And silence is more expressive than what has been said. And their heroes have one more feeling as huge and irreparable as love – a sense of self-worth. And although this time the characters are very young – in contrast to “At the end of the day”, where the drama unfolds between mature people with bitter life experience – they are just as almost severe in their dignity, despite their inexperience and even naivety.
Ishiguro grew up in Surrey. And yet it is impossible to get rid of the thought that one must be a Japanese (or a Hellenic of antiquity) in order to see the courage of the doomed and the beauty of inevitability in this way, in order to admire the humility of fate and the inevitability of sacrifice.
Two more words about beauty. The film is incredibly beautiful. The video sequence resembles an album of first-class photographs miraculously set in motion. At the same time, almost every frame I want to stop in order to consider in more detail. Whether it is rural houses made of rough dark red brick, a sweet face of a pensive girl in soft side light, or an alarming panorama of the sunset sky in scarlet-blue stripes – this is painting and light painting, a play of color and volume. The film’s director Mark Romanek made clips, shot Madonna and Michael Jackson and other stellar musicians. But there is nothing in common with “clip-like” in the sense we are used to (that is, a senseless flicker of sugary beauties) in his video sequence. Rather, he will remind you of the canvases of masters from Rembrandt to Magritte (cameraman Adam Kimmel).
But back to the content. There is something else amazing about the movie. This time. It is the future that happens in the past*. It all starts in 1967, in which “life expectancy increased to a hundred years” – as we will learn later, through organ transplants from cloned people. This is, apparently, the year of birth of our heroes.
Hailsham School takes place in 1978. And everything ends in 1994. Life changing in time is recreated in nostalgic detail: clothes, furniture, wallpaper, table lamps… Another similarity with a photo album, only a family one this time. Another string of the soul, which is disturbed by the skillful fingers of the player.
By the way, the title Never let me go is a line from the song. But not from the well-known one that Frank Sinatra sang: “Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go” (recorded in 1979). This Jane Monheit sang in 2010 – but it sounds like a forgotten hit of the fifties.
“Maybe our life is not so different from the lives of the people we save,” the heroine of the film reflects. And again: “What a blessing that we even got to know each other.”
– What do you think, what is the super idea in this film? my 16 year old son asked me.
– And you? I responded with a question to a question out of surprise.
– Probably, this is an attempt to understand what exactly makes a person a person: memory, feelings, something else …
“But I think this is a simple message,” I also made up my own version, “love does not give respite. Love is not a bonus or a trump card, it just is.
“Do not let me go” … Stop the outgoing? The eternal dream that it is possible, one has only to find out how “correctly”. And don’t we all let each other go in the end, so that later we can hopelessly try to console ourselves: “it’s happiness that we got to know each other” – a thought that does not heal anything?
After some time, I thought again: maybe the “super idea” is in seditious doubt: is self-sacrifice always good? It is one thing to sacrifice meaningful and voluntary. Another is if you were raised by a victim and do not see a choice for yourself. How then are you different from the piglets who are preparing to become ham?
And here is the last one. This film is one of those (few) that masterfully takes out the soul. And inserting it back becomes the concern of the viewer. I did it with difficulty. So for the faint of heart (including myself) it would be better not to watch**.
Drama, USA, 2010, 103 min.
Directed by: Mark Romanek
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Izzy Meikle-Small, Charlie Rowe
*Probably, in order for such an idea to arise, one must have a native language in the grammar of which the Future in the Past quite legitimately exists.
**And – yes, those who, based on a set of topics (dystopia, transplantation, love), will conclude about the heroes “fighting for their love” and defeating the whole world in an unequal battle, will be severely disappointed: where is the action? where is the fight? where is the shooting and the chase? where is the happy ending, finally? Alas. Longing for stamps is doomed to remain unsatisfied.