2010 SF romance, dir. Mark Romanek, Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley:
IMDb /
allmovie.
The generic love triangle plays out over a dark background. Spoilers.
I think I'm frustrated with this film because it's happening
halfheartedly on two levels, and I want it to be on at least three.
Level 1 is the triangle with the pretty children falling in and out of
love. Level 2 is the fact that all these children are clones raised as
involuntary organ donors, and their entire education has been designed
to prevent them from rebelling against that. The level 3 that I want,
but the film only hints at, is the examination of what sort of mind
you have when you've been brought up like that, how it survives
knowledge of the real world; and level 4 would involve someone getting
up enough gumption to run away and try to live as a free clone, and
maybe actually try to fight the system. I can't help notice that by
the end of this story while our three protagonists have been variously
angry, sad, and droopy about their Lot in Life, none of them has ever
rebelled in any way that would reduce the value of their organs as
transplant materials.
But this is not a science fiction book/film, it's litfic, so I'm not
supposed to examine the premises any more than I'm supposed to examine
the premises of real life; I'm just meant to take them as they come
and concentrate on the characters.
The problem is that the characters are clearly the products of a
deeply strange upbringing, but we never see the strangeness of it,
and I think that's because Romanek and screenwriter Alex "Jigsaw Man"
Garland want the viewer to be lulled into thinking that things are
normal, that this is just a restrictive school, until the Big Reveal.
But the Big Reveal comes about 24 minutes into the film, and after
that we still never see how strange it all is.
I can see what the thing's trying to do, and it does some of it
well, but there's never enough tonal consistency to get any actual
points across; it's repeatedly saying "look how clever I am" while
never genuinely being clever.
Three short stories do a better job of posing and answering this
film's Big Questions:
If you want more of my witterings, you should listen to
Ribbon of Memes.
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