Never Let Me Go
Prior to the book's publication, Garland had approached the movie's producers, Andrew Macdonald and Andrew Reich, about a possible movie, and wrote the film a ninety-six page script. While initially having trouble finding an actress to play Kathy, Mulligan was cast in the role after Peter Rice, who is the head of the company financing the film, recommended her while watching her performance in An Education. A fan of the book, Mulligan ecstatically accepted the role, having hoped to play that specific character if a film adaptation were to ever be made of the book, years before. The movie's message and themes were the factors that attracted Garfield to become a part of the film.
Kathy (Mulligan), Tommy (Garfield) and Ruth (Knightley) live in a world and a time that feel familiar to us, but is not quite like anything we know. They spend their childhood at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. When they leave the shelter of the school and the terrible truth of their fate is revealed to them, they must also confront their deep feelings of love, jealousy and betrayal that threaten to pull them apart.
The film is narrated by 28-year-old Kathy H. as she reminisces about her childhood at Hailsham, as well as her adult life after leaving the school. The story takes place in a dystopian Britain, in which human beings are cloned to provide donor organs for transplants. Kathy and her classmates have been created to be donors, though the adult Kathy is temporarily working as a "carer", someone who supports and comforts donors as they are made to give up their organs and, eventually, submit to death. As in Ishiguro’s other works, the truth of the matter is made clear only gradually, via veiled but suggestive language and situations.
The film is divided into multiple parts, chronicling phases in the lives of its main characters.
Never Let Me Go was scheduled for a limited release for select cities in the United States on 1 October 2010, but the date was later moved up to 15 September. The movie will be released in the United Kingdom on 14 January 2011, and on 9 February 2011 it will be released in France. Never Let Me Go was given an R rating for "some sexuality and nudity" by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). As a forum of promotion for the film after its release in September, Mulligan made guest appearances to introduce Never Let Me Go at movie theatre screenings, including at the Landmark Theatres and AMC Loews Lincoln Square. Upon the film's release at the TFF, a writer for the Los Angeles Times called the movie an "Oscar wild card", believing that it's reviews are "likely to be split between those who consider the film a bleak masterpiece and others who find it straining so mightily for aesthetic perfection that it fails to provide a gripping narrative." The Globe and Mail called Never Let Me Go one of 2010's "big noise" films. In the United States, Never Let Me Go will be released on DVD on February 1, 2011.
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