Never Let Me Go Film Analysis

Mark Romanek’s 2010 award-winning dystopian film, Never Let Me Go, explores the ethical behaviours of cloning and organ donations through the use of a range of film techniques. The central characters depicted within the film reflect insignificant members of society, such as prostitutes or alcoholics that is shown to closely replicate society’s attitudes towards similar existing individuals in the ‘real’ world. The moral ideologies shadowed in society is contrasted by Romanek’s cloning and organ donation system within the film. Romanek further explores the morality of the cloning system, whereby its purpose of creating organ donors predetermines the fate of the central characters, through the film techniques of cinematography, imagery and dialogue.

In the orientation of the allegorical film, the director employs written text, ‘The breakthrough in medical science came in 1952. Doctors could now cure the previously incurable. By 1967, life expectancy passed 100 years’, to provide a social context of the issues which were raised during the period. Initially reading the statement, the audience would instinctively experience a sense of exultation in the newly developed approach which will enable humans to achieve a longer lifespan. However, the use of dull dark blue background evinces that the strategies leading to this achievement in humans were not simple and may oppose the ethical principles of society. The fading of the highly scientific and sophisticated text further dispenses the intensity and severity of the atmosphere, encouraging the audience to ponder how the breakthrough was achieved. Additionally, the use of mise en scene substantially contributes to the film’s imagery. For instance, in an early sequence, a youthful Tommy and Kathy are pictured walking around a fountain covered in dead grass; this displays the dilapidated and derelict environment which the children are detained in, revealing society’s inhumane organ exploitation of ‘disposable’ clones in an endeavour to save ‘real’ humans. The further employment of the close-up of the dead flowers foreshadows the children’s

In a beginning sequence at Hailsham, dialogue is utilised by Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins) when speaking to the children about the future, “Before you are old, before you are even middle-aged, you will start to donate your vital organs that’s what you are created to do.” It is clear within this sequence after Miss Lucy has made this statement that the conformity of the ‘special’ children of Hailsham lacks response to such a ruthless system. The reactions within this sequence display that the cloning system has deprived the children of their freedom and ambitions in growing up to become ‘real’ humans with worth and importance to impact the world. Miss Lucy’s dialogue reveals the medical’s systems callous treatment towards cloned children in an attempt to cure diseases and save lives of ‘real’ humans with values, futures and goals. The children’s reactions influence the audience’s view in determining whether the process of involuntary sacrificing cloned humans to protect the highly valuable lives of ‘real’ humans is ethically correct. Likewise, Romanek further develops this idea through Kathy’s final dialogue, “What I’m not sure about is if our lives are so different from the lives of the people that we save, we all complete.” This dialogue unveils that Cathy was conscious as a clone that her duty as a living individual is different from ‘real’ humans, however, she contemplates whether living in the same