At the London Film Festival press conference for Never Let Me Go, the most insightful comments about the film were made by, in this order, Andrew Garfield (lead male actor), Kazuo Ishiguro (who wrote the novel the film was based on), Ella Purnell and Izzy Meikle-Small (child actresses) and finally, director Mark Romanek, whose observations were only marginally more useful than the banal contributions of lead actresses Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley. Screenwriter Alex Garland looked understandably depressed. Not only were no questions directed at him from the press, but he was excluded from the mutual admiration society of his colleagues: the actors kept saying how much they adored Ishiguro’s novel, and how greatly they respected him as an author, while Ishiguro said how much the actors’ performance had taught him about the characters he had created. Acknowledgements of Garfield’s contribution came across as a hasty and polite afterthought.

I always expect quite a lot from directors: one of the reasons you so look forward to meeting them is that they are usually brimming with additional information that deepens your understanding of the film’s themes and provides interesting insights into how the film was made. Most directors convey such a strong impression of deep personal investment in their film, and optimism about its potential impact. Faced with such vulnerability, earnestness and hope, you feel a bit guilty for thinking that the result is not that great. But just as it is the director’s job to make films, it is the commentator’s job to give an honest opinion: to tell potential viewers what they are in for, to share observations about the film with those who have already seen it, and to tell directors what they could have done better. If you acknowledge where a film succeeds, you must also point out where it fails: many of us have had the experience of setting out with the best of intentions, trying to communicate a certain message and finding that our message has not been received in the way it was intended. When I read press material about the films I have seen, sometimes the director’s explanation of his intentions highlights something about the film that I simply missed, either through inattention or because I just hadn’t thought about the film in that way. At other times, though, the director’s intentions and the resulting film are so far apart that I wonder if they ever bothered getting a fresh opinion from someone outside the production process, to check that the film would really achieve its intended effect.

Mark Romanek did not seem too worried about his film, and why should he be? It is based on a novel by a prize-winning writer, it stars Keira Knightley, and it has been selected as the opening night film for the London Film Festival. Clearly, Never Let Me Go has a lot going for it. Most of the questions at the press conference were directed at the actors, but when Romanek did get a question, he seemed slightly bored as he answered it, and his answers were just as boring as his demeanour. This instantly makes me suspicious: although you can’t expect every director to also be a philosopher, you hope that directors give a lot of thought to every decision that has to be made in a film. Not all directors will find it easy to talk about their motivations, and if a choice is good, there is not always a need for a rational explanation. But Romanek gave the impression of a journeyman who gets the job done without worrying too much about anything. If you had not seen the film, you would be surprised that someone with such a dull demeanour could make such a lyrical film. His most interesting remark at the conference was that he learned that Ishiguro was influenced by Japanese cinema when he wrote Never Let Me Go (strangely, Romanek discovered this from a magazine interview with Ishiguro rather than directly from the author). So, Romanek says, he watched ‘a lot of Japanese cinema’ in preparation for making this movie. In spite of being in a room full of people who watch films for a living, he didn’t bother to name a single Japanese film or director who had influenced him, nor did Ishiguro intervene to expand on this point. I believe that Romanek was talking in terms of the film’s aesthetic, but if he hadn’t mentioned it, I would not have guessed that there was any Japanese cinematic influence there.

Strangely, though, this film did remind me of one Japanese film in particular, but it was through similarity of theme and emotional impact rather than visuals. The film in question was Ikigami by Tomoyuki Takimoto, set in a dystopia where school-age children are given injections, one in 1000 of which contains a particle which will kill the child when it reaches early adulthood. The government keeps records of which children have received the fatal particle, and an agent is sent to give them notice of their final 24 hours (which are usually spent in anguished attempts at hedonism). The film’s bleakness left me open-mouthed, and I have not seen another film that was this depressing until now. If you want to be surprised by Never Let Me Go, you should stop reading now, as I’m going to give away the film’s big secret. Like the hapless young adults in Ikigami’s brave new world, the stars of Never Let Me Go are also headed for an inexorable early demise. Whereas only a tiny fraction of Ikigami’s school children are ill-fated, however, at the boarding school in Never Let Me Go, every one of the pupils is a clone who, as a grown-up, will gradually have their organs harvested for the benefit of the rest of society. One could argue that in Ikigami, there is less purpose to the random deaths: in the film, the government’s reasoning is that if people know that they might die young, they will have a greater appreciation for life, and thus Japan’s problem with suicide and a low birth rate could be resolved. In Never Let Me Go, by contrast, some good will come of the clones’ deaths: they will be helping regular members of society to escape fatal illnesses. Yet there is something much more humane about Ikigami’s early mortality: although death is inescapable for the unlucky few, they don’t learn about it until the day before it occurs, and death comes quickly. In Never Let Me Go, the clones have to live with their fate for the whole of their short lives, and death comes slowly, the result of chillingly rational extractions of vital organs.

At the press conference, the first question was from a journalist who said that the film had really shaken her. In a trembling voice she recounted her own experience as an asthmatic participating in medical research. She asked whether the film’s creators had taken into account people like her, who put their lives at risk for the sake of scientific advancement, or whether they thought about those who donate organs for money. The moderator of the conference, perhaps uncomfortable with the journalist’s emotion, asked if anyone had a response to this, and without waiting for an answer said ‘let’s move on’. Thankfully, Andrew Garfield proved himself a gentleman and a humanitarian, intervening to thank the woman for sharing this experience. Ishiguro then echoed his appreciation, but said that he was not thinking specifically in these terms when he wrote the novel. He did say, though, that that the situation of the clones could serve as a metaphor for the way in which many aspects of Western life come at the expense of the welfare of people in developing nations, many of whom die at an early age.

As a viewer, I quickly began to look for a higher meaning to justify the story of Never Let Me Go, which otherwise seemed only to be of morbid interest: watching schoolchildren grow up into healthy young adults destined for a fate which would be heartlessly meted out to them. In the context of the film’s brave new world, this situation is acceptable not just because it is the result of scientific advances, but because the clones have been created for the purpose of organ donation. However, physically and emotionally the clones appear no different from regular humans, and for this reason their fate was unacceptable to me. It held the horror of a holocaust: humans regarding other humans as inferior and expendable, and coldly killing them. Although unlike ethnic cleansing, the clones’ death has a justifiable purpose, as it saves the lives of others, the destruction of the clones is worse because nobody speaks out to say it is wrong. Sally Hawkins plays a non-conformist teacher who is clearly disturbed by the children’s fate, and the workmen who come to the school appear to be troubled by what is going on, but there is no straightforward denunciation of the practice. My interpretation of this film, from the beginning, was that it was an Orwellian cautionary tale: in the face of any revolutionary new idea, we need a dose of humanity alongside reason, and must always question the human impact of an abstract idea. This interpretation is unsatisfying, however: if the film is an argument against two-tiered societies and institutionalised exploitation, then surely there would be a character in power who would make a greater effort to rebel, or one of the clones would attempt to escape. What is so maddening about this film is that the clones are so passive. It is to the credit of the actors performance and Romanek’s (as he puts it) ‘romantic and aesthetically pleasing’ approach that the audience will still feel great sympathy for the clones, and find it unbearable to see them being taken advantage of. They don’t have microchips implanted under their skin, but wear security bracelets which they could remove. They are not kept in prisons but in schools and cottages with open doors. They have ample opportunity to run away, but never even try. Although the central male character, Tommy, screams and shouts against his fate on one occasion, this is the lone example of rage: the characters all ‘go gentle into that good night’.

It is interesting that one of the child actors, Izzy Meikle-Small, used the term ‘gentle’ to describe the film’s protagonists, and to explain her fondness for them. Her colleague, Ella Purnell, astutely observed that in the modern world we have become unaccustomed to the idea of simply accepting our fate. Towards the end of the film, just before it was explicitly formulated by one of the characters, I wondered whether the film’s theme might be mortality: like the clones, we all have a fate that, as Larkin put it, ‘we can’t escape yet can’t accept’. However, a number of key details on a literal level block this metaphorical reading: as Sally Hawkins’ character points out, other children grow up with diverse possibilities for their future, whereas the clones’ future is precisely limited. Even the short life that they do have is markedly inferior to that of the average human being: they are primarily restricted to a limited society of fellow clones, they have few possessions, and know very little of the pleasures of the outside world. Although every human being has a relatively short lifespan, many at least have a chance of living to old age, possess a certain degree of autonomy, and are able to enjoy life’s variety while they are alive. For this reason, the clones don’t work especially well as representatives of the everyman. They would work better as a metaphor for the underclass in Britain’s increasingly segregated society, a class of people who are exploited by the rich, have very few choices in life, and little chance of ever changing their position. Keira Knightley said that someone she knew thought that Ishiguro’s novel ‘summed up our generation’: while Knightley laughingly said she hoped this wasn’t true, it may be the most apt interpretation of the film. If the clones represent an underclass, their passivity remains problematic. Surely an increased ability to change our fate is one of the greatest advancements of the modern age, and we should promote this ability, rather than romanticising passive acceptance of a fate imposed on us from above.