Never Let Me Go

After Pride and Prejudice, Carey Mulligan had the leading role in An Edcation, nominated for an Academy Award, and then I saw advertisements for Never Let Me Go. Coupled again with Keira Knightley, after Atonement and Edge of Love, this movie was destined for great things. With the added talent of Andrew Garfield after The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasus and The Social Network, these actors were at their dramatic primes, and honestly, I think audiences were ready for this type of serious intellectual drama.
Never Let Me Go is a novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It was made into a film directed by Mark Romanek in 2010. The plot centers on three children who become entangled in a love triangle and are scientific specimens, created in a laboratory and raised in order to provide their organs to severely ill patients. As children, Ruth, Kathy and Tommy, spend their childhood at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. As they grow into young adults, they find that they have to come to terms with the strength of the love they feel for each other, while preparing themselves for the haunting reality that awaits them. The novel and film follow similar themes to The Island, and AI: Artificial Intellegence.
The novel's title comes from a song on an American cassette tape called Songs After Dark by singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy purchases the tape during a swap meet-type event at Hailsham. Hearing it as a mother's plea to her baby, Kathy on many occasions dances while holding her pillow and singing the chorus: "Baby, never let me go." On one occasion, while she is dancing and singing, she notices Madame watching her and crying. At this time Kathy does not understand the significance of the event. She then loses the tape and is devastated. A few years later, on a trip to Norfolk, Tommy and Kathy find the tape and he buys it for her, although it has lost its significance to her somewhat, by this point. Many years later, during the final confrontation between Kathy, Tommy, and Madame, she asks Madame about her tears after seeing her that day, years ago. Madame replies that the image she had seen was of a little girl facing the new world that was emerging, an efficient but cruel world, and asking the old world not to let her go.