I need to get in the habit of doing more preliminary research before picking a film, seeing as I had written off Kazuo Ishiguro. Furthermore, the Netflix blurb made it sound like just a romantic drama, not an alternate-history sci-fi. Granted, the sci-fi elements are pretty mild -- we don't get any special effects; it's mostly social -- but they are crucial to the plot. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by elaborating.
Thanks to a fictitious breakthrough in the '50s, life expectancy has vastly increased for most humans; but like in Metropolis, the luxury comes at a price to others. The story focuses on a love triangle among those others, starting in their tweens in an English coed boarding school that emphasizes staying healthy. A conflicted teacher breaks the rules and spills the beans: All the students exist solely to donate their organs in adulthood, eventually dying from it. Only in act 2, after graduation, do they learn why they're treated so differently: They're clones. Nevertheless, they try to fulfill their short lives with love, especially in light of a rumor that if two clones can prove their true love, they get a three-year deferral on donations. First-person narrator Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) like each other first, but Kathy's frenemy, Ruth (Keira Knightley), schemes to interpose herself for reasons beyond love.
As you might expect from a dystopia, the language becomes chilling. Not only do the clones take interest in looking for their "original models," but they don't "die"; they "complete."
Really, the soft-spokenness of most of the movie builds on that chill. People outside the system must give little thought to the lives of clones. The clones themselves, while not happy about the arrangement, don't seem to think it unfair. They make no effort to escape illegally, first because of horrific rumors about what happens to escapees and later because they barely have the skills for any dealings with outsiders. It's all rather hopeless.
This points to why it took me ages to acquire a taste for social sci-fi -- the kind that doesn't focus on advanced technology, aliens, an apocalypse, etc. When it's about a type of society that has never existed yet, it usually involves the majority of the population subscribing to values we find repulsive and thus hard to believe. I doubt that you could convince that many people that clones aren't human enough for basic rights, and if you did, why compromise by educating the clones and letting them move about society, ostensibly able to pass for normal? Why not slaughter them outright instead of seeing whether they survive surgery after surgery, particularly when they lose their will to go on?
For a large chunk of the movie, however, we're hardly made to dwell on what sets the main trio apart. Director Mark Romanek made a point to dial back anything like futurism to leave room for attention to a love story. In my view, that was a mistake. The romantic and sci-fi sources of pathos barely feel integrated, and the story feels slow and largely underwhelming. Perhaps too much got left behind in the novel.
In case you're wondering how the clones hope to "prove" their love, it ties into their artwork. Art is supposed to be a window of the soul. Me, I think it has too much potential for deception.
NLMG has pretty good ratings overall, and I suppose it's more original than The Remains of the Day, but originality goes only so far with me. I demand a bit more meaning from downers. Now to move something uplifting to the top of my queue.
No comments:
Post a Comment