The Remains Of The Dated Idea
Never Let Me Go opens in selected theatres tomorrow. The trailer made it look like a film in the Merchant-Ivory vein, but there are odd undercurrents. Just what sort of boarding school is this, where the kids have expectations of a short life, and make "donations"?
So I checked the Kazuo Ishiguro novel on which the movie is based to discover the plot and it was pretty much what I expected. I won't spoil it--check the link if you want to know the "secret"--but it's pretty much the same plot as the failed blockbuster The Island, (which itself was accused of ripping off other works), which came out the same year as the celebrated novel. If anything, The Island's variation, even with all the sci-fi trappings, makes more sense.
Trouble is, I find the plot pretty silly. I realize you can treat it symbolically, and maybe go somewhere from there, but I have so much trouble giving them the premise, it'll be hard to accept the rest.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:21 AM
3 Comments:
I never saw The Island, even though the trailers were intriguing -- and maybe even a little Lost-like.
Is it worth checking out?
Let's put it this way--there are plenty of other movies to put on your list before The Island.
The Island is a lot closer to your average dystopian science fiction scenario (though it's more upbeat--after all, this is a hopeful blockbuster) than to Lost.
I actually quite liked "Never Let Me Go" when it came out but can't imagine why anyone would want to make a film of it. Not a good candidate for Hollywood-ization- this is more a Masterpiece Theater- type production (though its not really a masterpiece). Its very talky and English and the ordinariness with which the central conceit was handled was part of the appeal- it was hardly a scifi thriller- to reduce the book to something that has a "spoiler," I think misses the point. Its more a literary fiction type of book with a plot twirl (not quite a twist).
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