Rating of
3/4
could have and should have been more powerful
mrschu47912 - wrote on 10/26/10
If you’ve paid any attention to trailers, you’ll know that Never Let Me Go is based on what time magazine calls the best novel of the decade. I haven’t read the book, but I can only assume that it is at least decent book. When reviewing a film that is an adaptation of a book, I have a hard time deciding what to think. Sometimes the movie is changed drastically, and therefore you can treat it like an original story. But when it is a straight-up adaption, which I believe this is, I don’t know what to give the filmmakers credit for. After seeing this film, I think I understand.
Never Let Me Go studies the original themes of the novel, and does it well. Give them credit for that. I could use this time to discuss the story of people who live their whole life as spare parts. But I wont because that’s really nothing to give great appreciation to the movie itself.
Perhaps the novel is too good, so a complete interpretation is necessary to make the best possible movie. The reason it was not the best possible movie it could be, is simply because the story is much more powerful than the film portrayed. Not to bring down Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield or Keira Knightly. They all gave solid performances. But this is such a big and powerful story, yet everything seemed to simple. This could be Director Mark Romanek fault. The movie is beautifully shot, but like many others, Romanek lets himself get taken away by visuals and not depth of the film.
In other words, even with a cast that features what I think are some of the best up and coming performers out there right now, all this film sets out to do is give a good looking visualization of the novel.
