Friday 11 February 2011

Never Let Me Go

There's 3 reasons why I didn't really like Never Let Me Go:

1) The trailer was misleading. I know judging a film's content by it's trailer is rather like judging someone's hotness by their facebook profile picture, but I had really high hopes for this film. The trailer made the film out to be a poetic mix between mystery and human melodrama. The melodrama is present, but all mystery vanishes within the first 20 minutes.. and is anything but poetic.

Obligatory poster-friendly shot that's not actually in the film

2) The music was all wrong. This is something I rarely moan about, because I never really hear any obvious faults with a film's soundtrack. However, Never Let Me Go completely fails to find the appropriate tone to tackle it's very conflicting concepts. Scenes that should have been utterly heartbreaking were mysteriously taken hostage by eerie Kubrick-like string quartets.

3) For a film about the existence of the human soul, the film feels pretty soulless. I shan't ruin any surprises for anyone unfamiliar with the premise, but the film expects you to accept that this story takes place in an inhumane, ethically bankrupt, and merciless world. Something of which I sincerely struggled with.

I guess the biggest problem with the film was I was never really moved by it, despite having a mind-blowing performance by Andrew Garfield:


In short: read the book.

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