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Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan, Charlotte Rampling, Nathalie Richard ... see more see more... , Sally Hawkins , Andrea Riseborough , Domhnall Gleeson

Director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) and writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later) team up to adapt Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro's introspective sci-fi novel about a group of unsuspecting boar... read more read more...ding-school students who make a horrifying discovery about themselves. Sheltered teens Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) all grew up at a remote English boarding school, and now they're hungry to explore the real world. Their dreams of freedom are soon stifled, however, upon learning that they are nothing more than clones created specifically for organ harvesting. Now, in addition to confronting their own mortality, all three must come to terms with a lifetime of emotions and unfulfilled longings while pondering their true purpose for being. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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70% liked it

34,151 ratings

Critics

71% liked it

163 critics

R, 1 hr. 43 min.

Directed by: Mark Romanek

Release Date: September 15, 2010

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DVD Release Date: September 21, 2010

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Stats: 3,593 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (3,593)

  • jmanard52
    May 14, 2011
    jmanard52
    Excellent acting takes you on a journey into a world that could easily be . . dark, haunting, and very heartbreaking story of coming to age knowing what will be at the end of the journey . .completion . .
  • dunmyer
    December 14, 2012
    dunmyer
    "Never Let Me Go" is only about 115 minutes long, but it seems to go on forever. I had to let it go. It was so unbearably languid that I had to shut the DVD off after 80 minutes. I can only bear so much languor and poor editing.

    Music-video director Mark Romanek ("One-Hour Pho... read moreto") keeps trying to break into feature films, but he's having trouble learning the art of film. He composes beautiful sequences, as you'd expect from a music-video man. What he's not learning is the skill of stringing together sequences to make a compelling film. This was his problem with "One-Hour Photo" (2002), and it's his problem with his follow-up film as well.

    "Never Let Me Go" had everything going for it: a superb, dark story (based on a Kazuo Ishiguro novel), excellent art direction and cinematography, and a stellar cast. But Romanek couldn't pull it together. Almost every scene is more languid than it needs to be. And, most irritating, each sequence is 30% longer than it should be. Everything is stretched out to the point where the viewer wants to slit his wrists in all the slack periods. After about an hour, I couldn't take it anymore.

    How sad, because this really should have been a major film. The central plot depicts a world (an alternative present) where England has created factory farms for humans. Clones are created and raised in remote, isolated boarding schools, until such time as their organs can be harvested for transplant. The main characters (played beautifully by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield) are clones trying to accept their fate and their short life expectancy.

    With a director who knew how to make feature films, "Never Let Me Go" might have been a major film. With Romanek's massive weaknesses as a filmmaker (particularly as an editor), it doesn't come together. Pity. This should have been great. Don't blame Ishiguro or any of the actors.
  • emilkakko
    June 24, 2012
    emilkakko
    Touching, heartbreaking but also oddly cold work from Mark Romanek who is better known from his masterful music videos.
    Romanek certainly knows how to make film look gorgeous, but i am not sure he completely accomplishes on delivering the emotional impact of the story. Somehow t... read morehe whole film leaves viewer a bit outside from it's characters and we never really seem to get inside their mind.
    Sure, there are beautiful moments, even brilliant ones. There is this nostalgic feel through the whole film. Feel of a love that never happened, but it truly is such a shame that Romanek comes so close to achieving the whole strenght of the story, but still fails.
    Maybe he still has something to learn from filmmaking. He might be able to capture a good looking pictures, but he cannot make it blossom completely.
  • paulkoh110
    February 8, 2012
    paulkoh110
    Beautiful, deep, and fantastic! Another great film from Mark Romanek whose directing skills show the bleak world from the perspective of the "donors". The emotions are consistently in a downward spiral and churns your stomach sometimes.
  • paulsandberg
    November 13, 2011
    paulsandberg
    Sci-fi has always been good at taking a premise and running with it. In the case of Never Let Me Go, we are asked to believe in a certain event - and if we believe, then everything else that follows is also believable. As is often the case with Sci-fi as well, the premise allow... read mores for the examination of moral implications - which is the backbone of the film.

    Unfortunately, what is being presented here certainly isn't anything novel, and what really propels the film is a kind of off-beat love triangle - though I use the term propel lightly, as the film moves at a glacial pace - allowing the viewer to wallow in the dark tones and somber attitudes enough to make you want to slash your own wrists.

    I don't really want to reveal anything in case you haven't read the book this is based on, but suffice to say we are witness to a group of youngsters in a English boarding school situation that is, well... different. They come through the teen years and bonds are formed, although there is an ominous tone that pervades every scene.

    There is a certain payoff at the very end of the film that is quite poignant and well done, but you sure have to wait a long time for it; slogging through many a scene meant, I'm sure, to be revelatory in nature, but do not tell the viewer anything he hasn't figured out well before the scenes transpire.

    The big moral question here does have some possible future relevance, but again, I seen the subject matter handled much better in several novels and other, more mainstream Sci-fi flicks that came decades before this one. I'm sure director Mark Romanik was trying to say something profound, given the subject matter, but this is a quiet little film that I can't recommend as it travels well trodden ground, and its only real revelation is perhaps an unintentional one: that governments lie to us.
  • deano
    September 6, 2011
    deano
    It's an intriguing exploration of hope and humanity as I totally understood the whole story of this drama-sci-fi film.
    On film, Kazuo Ishiguro's agonising existential allegory - in which three friends (Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley) grow up in a quietly horrif... read moreying alternative reality - becomes a melancholic masterclass in restraint, both profound and moving. Material this fragile could have broken in less sensitive hands than those of screenwriter Alex Garland and, particularly, director Mark Romanek. In another universe, Never Let Me Go may have won Oscars for its script, cinematography, music, direction and triumvirate of exquisite performances, from three of the premier actors of their generation. Difficult to imagine a more perfectly realised adaptation of a novel; fine literature translated into movie lyricism.
  • 5oclockcoffee
    August 31, 2011
    5oclockcoffee


    Interesting argument, bad execution*.




    What defines the soul? What distinguishes human beings from machines? Isnīt the emotional field, the capacity to have emotions? Can a machine be so perfect to the point it can develop any human characteristic like envy, ... read morejealousy, hope, love?


    "We didn't have The Gallery in order to look into your souls. We had The Gallery to see if you had souls at all."


    For me this sentence is nothing but absurd. I can imagine a computer, a robot creating a piece of art, but I canīt imagine they dreaming or suffering. I am not really able to define my beliefs and I wonīt get into this subject, but in my opinion, if a cloning succeeds itīs not only because of some bright people happened to know how to do it. If you know what I mean.

    Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are some of several special children who grow up in an austere English boarding school called Hailsham. The thing is that these children are all clones created by the government with the purpose to provide organ transplants to humans. Itīs interesting to note that theyīre mostly based off of what they call trash: prostitutes, criminals, etc. Why that?
    "If you ask people to return to darkness, the days of lung cancer, breast cancer, motor neurone disease, they'll simply say no."
    Wouldnīt we? Wouldnīt we say "oh, theyīre not humans and they come from the worst type of people, people our society doesnīt need". So how much humans (in the meaning of "Christians") we are? And how different would we be from them?

    Human condition and contradictions, justifications, lies. Thereīs a particular dialogue that called my attention:


    - Ruth, why do you do that thing? Squeezing Tommy's shoulder.

    - I'm allowed to touch Tommy, aren't I?

    - It's the way you're touching him. You know what I mean.
    It's copied from that television show.

    - That's so not...

    - Don't tell me "that's so not true." All that behavior,
    that's not what people do out there, in real life, if that's what you were thinking. (...) You copy them, and they copy from a television show.


    Maybe you donīt think about these things, so you wonīt get my point, but what I am asking is: wow original we are? Donīt we tend to live our life copying what we think is the right just as an escape from the only truth we know, our mortal condition?
    And, even knowing Iīm going too far and that itīs not a question the film brings, this particular dialogue made me think of how most of us live just like them, how we see us as simple mortals with determined lives when people out there (in our case, usually famous people), are the only ones allowed to live fully.




    *Itīs unacceptable to think that any of them would rebel against their condition, against the system. Not even one of them would refuse to pass their bracelet in that indifferent gesture of workers punching in and punching out the time clock?

    ** Thereīs a quote in the film Lisbon Story that can work as a synopsis or the epilogue of Never Let Me Go: "The Iight of the burning candIe gave me the feeIing that I am nothing, I am a fiction. What do I expect from this worId? What do I expect from you and from myseIf? I could have prophetic powers, understand all mysteries and all knowledge, I could have faith that would move mountains, but if I didn't have love, I would be nothing." (Pessoa, December 1934)
  • itsjustme2004
    August 29, 2011
    itsjustme2004
    Really good, but unbelievably depressing and rather slow. I kept hoping for a happy ending...but alas there was none. I kept asking myself one question, however. Why can't they just run away? hmmmmm...
  • blacksheepboy
    August 13, 2011
    blacksheepboy
    A very melancholic and depressing film adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's dystopian sci-fi novel. A poignant, achingly sad story that moves carefully and with intense performances, avoiding any easy preaching and providing a delicate meditation on time and the transience of life.
  • fb634552688
    August 6, 2011
    fb634552688
    Depressing and thought-provoking.

View All Never Let Me Go Reviews

Critic Reviews

Tom Huddleston
February 9, 2011
Tom Huddleston, Time Out

Pretty, empty, and immediately forgettable. Full Review

Amy Biancolli
October 8, 2010
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle

Never Let Me Go is gorgeous. And depressing. It's exquisitely acted. And depressing. It's romantic, profound and superbly crafted, shot with the self-contained radiance of a snow globe. And it's depre... Full Review

Tom Long
October 8, 2010
Tom Long, Detroit News

Oddly cold and detached, as if director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland couldn't decide precisely how to interpret Kazuo Ishiguro's popular novel and so they just laid it out flat. And flat... Full Review

Rene Rodriguez
October 7, 2010
Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

Never Let Me Go, director Mark Romanek's introspective adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, is a work of subtle beauty -- a melancholy meditation on the finality of life and the choices we make as ou... Full Review

Peter Rainer
October 1, 2010
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

Never Let Me Go is strangely moving and mournful, but I wish more had been made of the beauty these people are relinquishing, if only as a counterweight to all that artful drear. Full Review

Rick Groen
September 24, 2010
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

The emotional impact creeps up on the reader only gradually. Then, bam, it hits forcefully, memorably, and, yes, never lets us go. Full Review

J. R. Jones
September 24, 2010
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

The theme of Ishiguro's novel -- that we all construct delicate fictions to mask the dehumanization of modern life -- proves so elusive onscreen that by the last scene it has to be spelled out in a cl... Full Review

Chris Vognar
September 24, 2010
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

The combination of social anguish and dark chill in Never Let Me Go packs a quietly devastating punch. Full Review

Peter Howell
September 24, 2010
Peter Howell, Toronto Star

It may rob the film of drama, but Romanek has erred on the side of quality, crafting a beautifully cast and artfully rendered allegory of lost youth and trampled innocence. Full Review

Colin Covert
September 23, 2010
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Never Let Me Go is a touching, thoughtful, sublimely acted prestige drama based on a fantasy premise. Full Review

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    • Kathy: What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.
    • Kathy: It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I'd known, maybe I'd have kept tighter hold of them and not let unseen tides pull us apart.
    • Madame: You poor creatures.
    • Miss Emily: We didn't have to look into your souls, we had to see if you had souls at all.
    • Kathy: It had never occurred to me that our lives, so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I'd known, maybe I'd have kept tighter hold of them.
    • Kathy: "We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time."
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