FILM REVIEW Never Let Me Go

SPOILER NOTICE:  This film review might tell you more than you want to know.

An exquisite, understated film, eerie and haunting. John and I were both very moved - the poignant story is still floating in and out of my consciousness several days later.  In the future, which has already arrived, and is our current day, society breeds cloned humans in order to harvest body parts and organs for certain unnamed others. 

This is not a science fiction tale.  It’s much too gentle and small in scale.  The author and director have discussed the novel’s theme in larger terms, as a story about the experience of parents who must teach their children about the inevitability of death. 

It could also be read as a story of class.  The privileged owe their health, as well as their rank and status, to the classes below them whose daily work sustains their wealth.  Though body parts may not be the tender, certainly hard labor, lack of access to medical care and education are the price paid by the poverty-stricken. 

I also think it speaks to the issue of the value of human life - as we learn about new genocides, sex slavery, bodily mutilation, death sentences by stoning, and abusive child labor practices world-wide.  We don’t really care, do we.  They don’t really care, do they.  Exploitation is so acceptable. Explain it as meritocracy, theocracy, Hobbes-ian politics, democratic capitalism.

The clones believe all sorts of things about the outside world they will never experience, including that true love between them will buy them a few more years before they must begin their donation schedules. Most of all, the film is about love, perennial as the grass.

The artwork of the clone children in the orphanage is collected for a mysterious “Gallery”, whose purpose is never known.  The children never see an an actual exhibit, just as they never experience the great world and its treasures. The final use of the work, when we finally learn it, reduced me to tears upon the hearing. 

The actors are all superb. Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Andrew Garfield play the three clone children, whose lives are intertwined until each “completes” his or her donation schedule. Charlotte Rampling, in a chilling cameo role, is the Matron of Hailsham.

The critics haven’t liked it much: think it’s slow, cold, gives away the surprise too soon, as the novel did not. Pair this with “The Road”, for another dystopian view and a beautiful dark starkness.

The sadness of this film hasn't left me yet. 

ESSAY/ARTWORK:My Sister-In-Law's Art

I have a Birthday Twin, bestowed upon me as an extra gift from my husband when we married and I took his name 15 years ago. She is Peggy, my sister-in-law. We are married to brothers, John and Dayton, singular and distinctive each, an Ogden tendency, as I was to learn.

Now, a Birthday Twin is someone who is born on the same day as you, but our Twinship has a few extra features, which amuse, please, and cause us to marvel, no matter that one doesn’t comment on Fate, lest he knows we’re gossiping about him.  Besides the same day coincidence, we were born in the same year, and each of us has a beloved first child born on the same day.  And we are both artists, drawing, sculpting, loving nature, families, animals, travel, children, concerned about the world and our grandchildrens’ future.

 We discovered that the use of our middle initial, “R”, gave us the same signature for our artwork - “PRO” .  Now, when I sign an artwork, I always think of the other PRO and wonder what new work she is creating or finishing, wishing a little blessing for her and it. In her houses I feel such a familiar comfort; filled with heritage and charm, they satisfy much of my East Coast shelter/residency fantasy.  

These years have gone by fast, and we’ve got timely mileage now, resonant with the shared perspective of our generation, family ties, and similar energies, concerns, and sensitivities.  

We went back to the East Coast for an over-due visit last weekend, and what was she doing but painting stones and little rocks!  

I thought about all the artists in time who’ve sought out stone. They all will talk someday,on a single Heavenly cloud, about what they see animate in the closed form, what they release from the rounded volumes.  From Lascaux to Michelangelo to suiseki, the enduring material, so shaped by the powerful universe, holds some child-like wonder, like cloud-gazing, intuitive, and self-reflective at once; and the magic happens each time one walks a beach or trail, wades in a stream or hikes among erratic boulders or climbs a mountainside.  

And sometimes, truth be told, we take away a stone. The impulse to collect, cherish, and remember, so powerful that we carry it away and keep it.  What becomes of it, each only knows. 

A woman who is passionate about animals, the spirits she sees in the stones are revealed by her paintbrush: the humour, sweetness, vulnerability.  Here is her menagerie:

I think that each stone must have a voice that only those who are listening can hear as they walk.  And this is what they have become.  I’m smiling. 

PHOTO ESSAY: House of the 7 Gables, Salem; Boston MA

PHOTO ESSAY: 9-11 Memorial at LAX

One sunset evening I waited to pick up my husband - his late plane gave me time to visit the Theme Restaurant at LAX and the 9-11 Memorial made there below and in front of it.  It's a somber entrance for a dining room, but an airport, with it's leavings and arrivals, certainly is a fitting place for the souls who departure was caused by a tragedy of air travel's possibility.