We didn't have to look into your souls, we had to see if you had souls at all.

Never Let Me Go

(2010)

Low key and extremely sensitively directed by Mark Romanek and with performances of the quality you'd expect from Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. Keira Knightley – surprisingly - delivers an extremely astute performance, not so good that she can forget all the wood she's responsible for, but she holds her own against two young heavyweights.

What ultimately prevents the film from passing into greatness for me is the lack of any insight into the apparatus that has enabled their interior tale to occur. I'm sure some will argue that's the point, but we are cast a few scraps of glib social commentary by Charlotte Rampling that were probably not really worth the lack of effort.

Ultimately it fails to translate as a completely believable world because the glimpses out from their microcosm are unable justify the leap made by society at large (everyone accepts the state of affairs? the clones go freely in this world but the questioning of their cull-ability never develops?) It dangles too large a philosophical carrot, which it then refuses to bite into, to wholly satisfy.

****

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