Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go dir, Mark Romanek

This dystopian film draws on a number of techniques to reflect on the ethics of cloning.  The director encourages the viewer to empathize with the clones, while the human characters are often portrayed as colourless and emotionally detached.  For instance, the direction to most of the actors playing human roles seems to be to limit any smiling and to speak in monotone.  This provides a constant ironic backdrop since the clones strive (or are tasked) to prove how human they are. Not only do we know this is going to be futile, the viewer can be pleased that they will fail.

Flashback editing techniques are used from the off (fig 1) when the “flashback is introduced with Kathy’s voiceover in which she begins to narrate the past” (Corrigan and White, 155). This scene is all done from her point of view which “recreates a character’s perspective as seen through the camera.”, (Corrigan and White, 104).  By using narration Kathy’s ‘humanity’ is given emphasis and the audience is encouraged to see all subsequent events as unfolding through her eyes. 

One scene in particular (Fig 2) highlights the unsympathetic nature of humans who casually walk out of the hospital room in which Ruth has just died. This mise-en-scene shows the complete emotional detachment humans have in this world for what looks to us to be also a perfectly normal human. The lighting is dimmed in the background to throw emphasise on Ruth’s body, which is lit up “to comment on Ruth in a way the narrative does not”, (Corrigan and White, 82). Throughout a large portion of the movie, the audience is not encouraged to like Ruth very much.  But here at her death we are finally encouraged to empathize and the lighting and white sheet under which she bleeds, combine to make her appear almost Christ like.  

Contrast this with the parallel death bed scene for Tommy, the central character’s boyfriend.  Unlike Ruth, Tommy has a comforter and he dies staring into her eyes.  The cinematography in this still (fig 3), shows a disembodied reflection of Tommy in the glass.  Not only does this image conjure thoughts of a ‘soul’, the image seems carefully placed over the form of his girlfriend staring back through the glass.  In reality she’s just staring at him through a window, but the comparison with Ruth’s lonely passing couldn’t be more stark.   The camera movement is static which helps to assist in focusing on the narration and the action taking place. 

The mise-en-scene in fig 4 depicts a well-lit room. Dispassionate and emotionless doctors are distributed throughout the sterile hospital environment.  They serve to remind us what we imagine clones to be. Whereas Kathy is shown on the verge of crying and Tommy smiles back at her in exactly the way their teachers never did.  The nurses wear clinical white, but angelic they are not, whereas Kathy wears brown, the colour of healing, warmth and passivity. In this way the “mise-en-scene dramatizes how Cathy establishes her identity through interaction with the hospital room.” (Corrigan and White, 87). The contrast between the coldness of the nurses and the love depicted between the two clones could not have been made more clear.

Works Cited

Never Let Me Go Directed by Mark Romanek, Fox searchlight pictures, 2010.

Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White.  The Film Experience: An introduction. ^4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Print.