Strings of Time

"We didn't have the gallery in order to look into your souls. We have the gallery to see if you had souls at all."

~Never Let Me Go (2010)


The movie struck a chord with me. Never mind the annoyance at Keira Knightley's pouting face and similar acting skills (read the Last Night and this movie), or that Andrew Garfield (although pretty good in his role) still didn't come across as entirely believable, but Cary Mulligan, well her face honestly speaks of a thousand emotions and she might just be the next actress who I really feel deserves to be called that. An actress.

"What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time."

The movie did make me think, not so much of the ethical concerns of cloning for vital organs sake, but for the fact that sometimes we live on strings of time, that whether this time, artifically taken from us through "completion" or whether taken from us by some greater power or willingness of fate, happens to everyone. That people we take for granted will always be there, will one day not be. Then maybe the Grey Havens and eternal life wouldn't be appealing at all. After all, what is there left when there is no one to share memories with anymore?

"You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process."