Declan's blog

Carol and I went to watch the movie Never let me go. I came across its trailer on itune. The trailer did not tell a whole lot, but it did the job of arousing my emotion. I learned that the film is adopted from the novel of the same title written by Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese English writer who's been residing in London.The following is an exerpt from the first page:

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as "agitated," even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying "calm." I've developed a kind of instinct around donors. I know when to hang around and comfort them, when to leave them to themselves; when to listen to everything they have to say, and when just to shrug and tell them to snap out of it...

After the movie, Carol and I had a discussion on it. She pointed out an important statement that Kathy, the narrator and the main character of the movie, said about her and her friends' counterparts lived not different lives from theirs, and Carol said that the sentiment was well expressed. The  children in the movies are clones who are raised to be donors for organs. After their third or fourth donations, their short-lived lives will be completed. They are given everything they needed at the boarding school and are to keep their bodies healthy.

At first, the children are portrayed as victims of such circumstances; they are the exceptions, the unfortuante products that are used to sustain the longevity of the lives of their society. But at the end of the film, Kathy frankly tells us that they are not unlike their counterparts, that eventually everyone's life comes to an end. The nature will strip us off the abilities we once had and sometimes have us live in agony and pain before we lose our breathe. The lives of these donors are merely prescribed to them at a faster paste. We mourn for those who died at a young age, but we do not have the same sympathy for those who had lived a long life. Why do we pursue longevity as opposed to quality? Like the donors in the film, many of us live a life that was prescribed to us, and many do not resist it- especially as we age. The title is captured by Kathy's obsession with the song "Never let me go", symbolizing her reluctance of leaving the old ways of living and hope that they would hold on to her and not let the "new" ways of lives take her away.

I felt heavy after watching the movie. I was more inclined to construe that this was only a story about a poor bunch of children whose lives were predestined for them, and that their destinies would not befall me. I did understand the movie, but I was afraid to contrast it with my life. It made me chill the realization that there aren't much memory that I could recall from the past ten years of my life. I am not dissimilar from the children. It is as if I was somehow driven to continue living, as if I am only waiting for my life to be taken from me. I have always been preparing for a future, but there is nothing garantees that at the end of my effort I would not be stripped away the the things I wanted to do, the dreams that I had, and the abilities to appreciate life.