Our friend Joan Frawley Desmond has reviewed the new movie Never Let Me Go on the Catholic site Headline Bistro .
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro — the British writer that earned global fame with The Remains of the Day , a riveting story of a class-bound butler in pre-war England — Never Let Me Go isn’t fizzy “date night” material. Rather it goes to the very heart of what it means to be human: the search for our origins, the bonds of love and duty, the struggle to determine our earthly purpose. Such themes rarely surface in contemporary films, but they are treated here with a remarkable depth likely to threaten the complacency of reproductive technology’s most fervent cheerleaders.
A warning: The review doesn’t give away the main point of the book and movie, but it does give away more than some of you will want to know. I read the book not knowing anything about it and found the “reveal” both surprising and powerful. It’s a book I’d highly recommend: one of those, like the similar Children of Men , that says more than the story seems to.
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