Incompleteness, is what you are left with as the end credit rolls. You only feel an empty and incomplete numbness. Deep melancholy grips you just like the lead characters of this film, as one by one each of them succumb to their fate. Helpless and hopeless. So close to having a life, still so far. You relate to them and then you don't. After all they aren't humans per se. They are just mere clones. Clones who are modelled after trashes, as an angry and hurt Ruth blurts out.
"We all know it. We’re modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so long as they aren’t psychos. That’s what we come from. We all know it, so why don’t we say it?”
Which is farther clarified by Miss Emily's statement
"We didn't have the Gallery in order to look into your souls. We had the Gallery in order to see if you had souls at all."
As kids Kathy, Ruth and Tommy live in Hailsham boarding school along with hundreds of other children. Unaware of their fate they grow up like any other children in any other boarding school. Until one fine day Miss Lucy walks into their lives and smashes everything they ever believed in . Her daring move to tell them who they are and what lies ahead, is one of the most heart wrenching moments of this movie. As they slowly grasp the reality and become aware of their roles as organ donors , they try their best to create a parallel universe. The fact that their identity is nothing but a mere shadow. They are auxiliary. They are replaceable. They are worth as much as their each organ . Rather they are just vessels carrying the much valuable organs which are meant to be given to their originals. They are just no one. Even with these knowledge till the end they remain nothing but human. Everything they do, everything they feel and everything they are, anything but human. This is where Kazuo Ishiguro's novel and Mark Romanek's direction effortlessly merge together.
Love and Loss, Empathy and Inhuman, Fate and Mortality, Hope and Futility...all fit together seamlessly in this film. Even though they aren't human enough to claim some more time to live, yet they manage to live with enough dignity in the face of impending death. Love is their rebellion. Love is their only hope. And in the end Love is their only deliverance. I guess that's how we all live. In a way we all have a limited time span no matter how long or short it is. Yes, we all complete. Regardless of how much we try to cling on to life, we all live through it one way or the other. Destiny looms high on the horizon of this movie. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy never seem to question it much. Kathy's silent acceptance, Tommy's dashed hopes and Ruth's realization, intertwine their destinies yet keep them apart.
Destiny or Choice ? Which is more important? Is it even a question? Do we really have the luxury of choosing our destiny? Or is it always the other way around? If nothing else Never Let Me Go makes you believe that Destiny really doesn't give you much choice ! Acceptance is the only way to live one's life. And Kathy embodies that spirit. She has passively given up when her hopes of love were broken. She goes on with life, becomes a carer and fate once again connects her to Ruth and Tommy. Kathy narrates the entire story. We see their lives through her eyes. Her inert acceptance and unspoken resignation to fate act as a constant reminder of pervasive sense of futility. In a way it seems like subversion of free will.
Despite of this unceasing hopelessness , again her acceptance comes to her rescue. Her unflinching faith in love , regard for friendship and compassion as a carer define her and the life she choose to live. Ultimately her limited time span isn't futile, its complete. Its brimming as much as it could have been and in that she achieves liberation. And with that we get our share of catharsis.
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