-vs.-
Having read Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go and now, a few months later, having watched Mark Romanek's film adaptation, I've come to the conclusion that these two works of art are more effective when experienced together than they are individually. Each has its strengths and its--well, maybe "weaknesses" is too strong a word where the book is concerned, but the movie presents certain scenes more effectively than the book does.
In my initial reaction to reading the novel I mentioned that the three main characters did not seem particularly mature, emotionally speaking. I decided that this had to do with the sheltered lives they had been forced to lead as clones within the donor program. With no meaningful contact with anyone in the outside world, they were required to determine for themselves what it means to be alive. But this emotional detachment, though effective, also left me feeling as if the book were missing something. At no point did I get that tug on my heart that happens when I read a passage that evokes a strong emotional response. Perhaps this reflects poorly on me (i.e., maybe I'm only attuned to big--some might say overwrought--emotional moments instead of the more subtle and sophisticated emotions in the work of writers like Ishiguro) but, in the end, Never Let Me Go didn't affect me the way that novels such as The Handmaid's Tale or The Road did.
The movie adaptation, on the other hand, contains some beautiful, heartbreaking moments that were posed with less punch--or weren't present at all--in the book. The attendance bracelets, for one. I like how they were used without comment, the donors simply sweeping them across the attendance counters as they entered/ exited rooms or buildings, the implied sinister message (i.e., you cannot escape) not even on their minds as they do so.
Likewise, the scene of Ruth's "completion" presents an eerie contrast to our own collective knowledge (thanks to countless medical dramas, from M*A*S*H to Grey's Anatomy) of how doctors' reactions to imminent death in an operating room should go.
Then there's Rachel Portman's wistful, elegaic music--the kind of score that gets no love from the Academy Awards*--which amplifies, without overpowering, the emotions presented by the actors onscreen.
Speaking of the actors, this film has a excellent cast. In a movie light on dialogue and heavy on quieter, anguished moments, each of them did her/his part in elevating the material to near sublimity. Carey Mulligan (as Kathy), Andrew Garfield (as Tommy), and Charlotte Rampling (as Miss Emily) in particular deserve special attention for their wonderful performances, also overlooked by the Academy.** Mulligan's expressive eyes could have practically carried this film all by themselves, Garfield's wounded strength lent a powerful humanity to his (not all that) ambiguously soulless/soulful character (and which explains why he has been chosen to portray the perennial underdog Peter Parker in the 2012 Spider-Man relaunch), and I don't know who could have delivered Miss Emily's final, gut-wrenching line to Kathy and Tommy with more brutal tact than Rampling.
What else? Oh, the children's excitement (and the deliverymen's stone-faced indulgence of that excitement) over the pitiful "bumper crop" of discarded junk presented to them for their purchase at the sale; the sad humor of Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, out in the world for the very first time, nervously mimicking Rodney's food order at the diner; Ruth, frail after two donations, making her way down the hospital corridor with the aid of a walker, subconsciously cradling her right hand with its catheter still attached; the scene with the boat, and Tommy's eager exploration of its deck while pressing his hand against his own still-tender donation scars; Tommy gathering up his drawings after he and Kathy learn that the deferrals were never real, and Madame uselessly offering empty praise, saying, "I'll keep them if you want me to."
However, the movie is an abridgment, as all film adaptations of novels must be. I subscribe to Syd Field's view that books and movies are fundamentally different, and that an adaptation cannot be truly faithful to its source material no matter how hard it tries to be, simply because they are two different types of media. Thus, one should judge an adaptation on its own merits rather than in relation to the "original." Nevertheless, my knowledge of Ishiguro's novel filled in some gaps in the movie that, as far as I'm concerned, were essential to my appreciation of both works.
First, Madame's disgust and/or fear of the children at Hailsham, which stands in for the general public's willingness to accept the harsh fate of these children by thinking of them as something other, or less than, human. (Though there is Madame's line near the end of the movie, where she is trying to express sympathy with Kathy but nonetheless refers to her and Tommy as "creatures.")
Then there's the gallery, made matter-of-fact in the film, which was not actually a gallery in the book. Instead, the reason why Madame collected the best of the children's art and poetry was a mystery to them, and they conceived the possibility of the gallery themselves. The administrators of Hailsham were collecting the art for the same reason in both the book and the movie (as a way to prove that the children have souls) but this detail was more subtle and somehow more effective in the book. Perhaps it helped to intensify the overall impression of the children's dismal, predetermined way of life. (The idea of a gallery, conceived by the administrators, is somehow more a celebration of these children than a mere collection, utilized for presumably legal reasons, which the children nonetheless build up themselves as something more romantic--a formal gallery of their work.)
In the novel, another deepening of this sense of an inevitably predestined, incomplete life is reflected in the children being vaguely aware, from as early in their lives as they can remember, that they are different from other people and will live the lives of donors. Thus, in the novel, when Miss Lucy finally tells the children outright that they are more or less doomed to this half-life, they don't seem particularly upset by it. On the contrary, it's the kind of thing they feel embarrassed talking or even thinking about; they prefer to keep it out of their minds--aware of it, but undiscussed. (Whereas, in the movie, the children are equally unfazed by Miss Lucy's speech but it's unclear if they'd known as much about their fates before she told them. In any case, Kathy does not reflect on the incident in her narration, as she does in the book.)
Also missing from the movie is Ruth's mundane desire to someday work in an office. A dream that any person in the regular world would more likely consider a nightmare (or in any case nothing to daydream about), Ruth's dream shows how many of the donors' greatest desire is simply to lead average lives. For them, average is the impossible dream.
Perhaps the most important hook missing from the film is the full story behind Kathy's beloved music tape, Songs after Dark by Judy Bridgewater. In the film Tommy gives her the tape, which he bought at the sale, and Kathy listens to it a few times later on. But in the book she is the one who buys it, and there's a beautiful set of scenes, the first in which Kathy dances to the song "Never Let Me Go" with her eyes closed and a pillow to her chest, imagining that the pillow is a baby (something she can never have). When she opens her eyes she sees Madame in the doorway, watching her and crying. Much later, during her and Tommy's final meeting with Miss Emily and Madame, Kathy asks her why she was crying, and Madame says she envisioned a child facing this new world of medical science and pleading with the old world not to let her go. In between these scenes, Kathy loses the tape and Tommy later finds another copy of it for her during their trip to Norfolk. This is a scene that, for me, crucially strengthened the bond between Kathy and Tommy, leading to their eventual attempt to obtain a deferral together.
In the end, I liked both the film and the novel, but didn't love either one of them. Together, however, they create something larger than their individual parts, and that combination, whatever it is one might call it, is something I love.
*Though it did win the San Diego Film Critics Society award for best score.
**Carey Mulligan won three awards for her performance and Andrew Garfield won two.
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