When I read Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, the Donors' purpose was left murky until midway through the book. In the film, it's clear to us but not, up to a certain point, to the children. They live within a closed world whose value system takes pride in how often and successfully they have donated. They accept this. It is all they have ever known. One of the most dangerous concepts of human society is that children believe what they are told. Those who grow out of that become adults, a status not always achieved by their parents.
We meet three Donor children, first when young and then later. They are Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, played in their 20s by Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley. They were raised at Hailsham, a progressive boarding school for Donors: progressive in the sense that it's an experiment based on the possibility that these test-tube babies are real human beings. Well, of course they are, we think. But it doesn't suit the convenience of the larger society to think of them in that way. If you are about to get someone's heart, don't you tend to objectify the source? You should. If you get my heart, I don't want you moping around about me. It's your heart. You pay the bills.
The teachers at Hailsham aren't precisely progressives in the John Dewey tradition, but the school is the last one that still encourages the children at all. The society wants these Donors for one purpose and doesn't want to waste resources on them for any other. If you can walk through this plot without tripping over parallels to our own society and educational systems, you're more sure-footed than I.
The director, Mark Romanek, wisely follows Ishiguro in burying any meanings well within a human story. The film is about Kathy, Tommy and Ruth and their world, and not some sort of parable like 1984. Essentially it asks, how do you live with the knowledge that you are not considered a human being but simply a consumer resource? Many hourly workers at big box stores must sometimes ponder this question.
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