Never Let Me Go

I asked for movie recommendations from people on fb and twitter and this flick was suggested by a fb friend cum B school senior cum acquaintance. 

I have so many categories for people in my life : 
- best friend/ex-best friend/good friend/fb friend/twitter friend/instagram friend/colleague/ex-colleague/colleague turned friend/engineering batchmate/B school batchmate/acquaintance and people-who-need-to-die-and-leave-me-alone.

Yeah... it's complicated.


Anyway... this isn't a movie for the faint hearted. For one, it's slow... melancholy... without humour... and yet it's beautiful. It's a movie I won't forget in a hurry. I may not have caught every dialogue or understood all the undercurrents... but I felt enough to be moved... to feel more than 'nothing'. It takes a lot to feel more than 'nothing' these days.

It is based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (yep, that's going on my reading list), stars Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan and is directed by Mark Romanek. 

The story is about 3 kids - Kathy (Carey), Ruth (Keira) and Tommy (Andrew) who are in the boarding as kids. They are not allowed to go out of the fenced grounds and don't have parents. They are being brought up to be organ donors. Yep, this is a fictitious (I hope) sci fi movie. Their life is about growing up and donating organs till they ultimately die. Most of them don't survive even 3 donations. 

Kathy and Tommy become friends and Kathy even likes him till Ruth steals him away. Cut to when they are 18 and Ruth and Tommy are dating while Kathy is extremely unhappy and jealous. 

Kathy moves away to become a 'carer' till she has to donate while Ruth and Tommy break up and go their separate ways.
They meet again a few years later when Ruth has donated twice and is extremely weak and Tommy too. They drive to the beach and Ruth apologizes for keeping Tommy and Kathy apart because she didn't want to be alone. Tommy and Kathy get together and decide to try for a 'deferral'- which is a temporary time out from donations for two people who are in love and can prove it. But they get to know there are no deferrals. There is no time out. This is their life. Donating organs till they die. There is no way out. Sure, it's noble and it saves lives. But it sucks.

The movie ends with Tommy dying during his 3rd donation and Kathy receiving a notice for her 1st one. 

The organ donations are the background. While the movie is about friendship, love and fate.

The only problem I had with it was understanding what was happening in the beginning. I took the time to read a little about the plot and then re-started the flick. 

Watch it only if you like slow and deep movies. Else avoid.