Life comes with surprises, and that is the beauty of it. One kind of surprise that occurs to me, occasionally, is from watching movies. I am a movie buff, but I barely have time these days indulging myself in movies - too luxurious an act. So after a crazy week of work, I randomly picked a film to watch. And it is surprisingly good. How do I define a good movie? Here are some of my criteria:
- Interesting plot that provokes plenty of afterthoughts
- excellent performance
- somewhat depressing
- great ending
- great soundtrack
The movie, called “Never Let Me Go,” appears to fit all of them. It tells an unconventional sic-fi story that images history unfolded differently in the past fifty years. In the 1950s, medical science made a breakthrough that was able to to “cure the incurable” and markedly increased life expectancy. This came with a condition: Fresh organs were needed. As a result, the society decided to clone a special type of “creatures” whose only purpose of living was to give their organs to save humans’ lives. Of course in the movie these “creatures" are played by human actors - you cannot tell from their appearance, and only at a certain point of the movie you realize that they are, or supposed to be, different (in this sense, forgive me that I am spoiling the suspense). These creatures, when still young, were sent to a special school. And when they grew up, they started to give their organs. After three or four givings, they “complete.” The movie traces the lives of three of these “creatures” from childhood to their ultimate “completion,” telling a touching story of love, friendship, and redemption. These are terms we reserve for humans, but they seem to have them too. That is the point of the movie.
Well, sounds pretty depressing, doesn’t it? And it is. The first response we may have is that this is one of those dystopia movies that do not paint a rosy picture of our future, with a highly suspicious attitude toward modern science (think about another good movie “Children of Men”). It asks a familiar ethical question: At what price shall we pay to benefit ourselves? Here “ourselves” could mean a subgroup of us or the entire humanity. There are many tragic examples of this in history, unfortunately. A famous example is the notorious Tuskegee Test done in Alabama in early twentieth century, where US physicians deliberately untreated the African-American community contracted by syphilis to acquire information about the disease. Obviously they considered the community as sub-human, which justified their action. To go broader, we can also think about the arguments of animal rights movement, their critiques on the cruel use of animals in scientific research. We are nowhere near the end of debates on the ethics of doing science. Perhaps that is a good thing.
Although its plot directs audience to ask many provocative, if not polemic, questions, this is a movie that reflects rather than attacks. And it delves deeper to ask a philosophical question: How do we define ourselves as humans? Evolutionary theory teaches us that we came from animals, and at a certain historical point, a critical point, we broke from them and became unique. What is this uniqueness about us? Is it language, capacity of using tools, morality, special way of thinking, free will, or ability to love? The answers could go on and on, offered by our ancestors ever since the dawn of civilizations, but we still haven’t found the answer definitively. Maybe we never will. One of the most fundamental puzzles that challenge science today is the rise of our consciousness. Philosophers, at least in the Western tradition, phrase it in a different way: Where did our soul come from? In one moment of the movie, one of the “creatures,” Tommy, has a conversation with the principal of the school where he was sent to as a young child. Children in the school were asked to draw pictures from time to time that were inspected by a lady from an art gallery. The purpose was never explained to the children. Tommy suspects that this is an exercise to look into their souls. The principal, played by the superb Charlotte Rampling, retorted matter-of-factly: “We didn’t use them to look into your soul; we used them to see whether you have a soul at all.”
How do we know we have a soul? The psychiatrist Rollo May, in his Freedom and Destiny, suggested a fascinating response: We anticipate our own death. Animals do not seem to have this consciousness, unless they are in duress (admittedly, children don’t have this as well.) Soul and mortality are intwined - all religions in our world address this fundamental relationship in various ways. In essence, humans live in paradox: we are endowed by free will on the one hand, and the knowledge of the inevitability of our demise, on the other. We are torn between freedom and destiny. And I think this is the most profound dimension of the movie - it is a sobering reflection on mortality. The ending, in this sense, is poetically beautiful. One of the “creatures,” Cathy, stands in front of a fence overlooking a wild, open field. She will have her first organ-giving soon. She ponders, with eyes brimmed with tears: “What I am 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.”
Before death, we all become equal (“we” could be quite expansive here). Sounds familiar? That is what Jane Eyre says to Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s acclaimed novel Jane Eyre:
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you - and full as much heart! ... I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, not even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal - as we are!
And we can find the similar sentiment in China a thousand years ago. Here is the wisdom from the renowned poet Tao Yuanming (陶淵明):
I lament the change from light at dawn to sunset, and mourn the long labor of life. Since we all complete in a hundred years, why do we have so few joys and so many sorrows!
悲晨曦之易夕，感人生之長勤；同一盡於百年，何歡寡而愁殷！
Death not just demands equality; it also compels us to cherish life more (and I believe this is Rollo May’s point).
But this thought, to many minds in our modern world, sounds too passive, if not fatalistic. A film critic from the New York Times - I suppose a typical response from a liberal-minded newspaper - accused the movie of being too dull, with too many tears that deprive the feeling of life. Life here means action, and perhaps rebellion. These poor creatures dutifully comply with their fate and sacrifice their lives without fighting back. Too docile and obedient an attitude that counteracts the spirit of this nation, which was founded on rebellion and fighting for a better life. For this critic, these creatures probably should take actions, like the animals in the movie "Chicken Run,” fighting with the evil owner of the farm to seek a life of freedom (George Orwell’s Animal Farm looms large here.) The political undertone of these actions are patent.
Yet as I said before, "Never Let Me Go" is more philosophical than political, so it will never appeal to a political-conscious reviewer such as the one from the New York Times. To understand this point more, perhaps it is necessary to bring the novel upon which this film is based into the picture. Not surprisingly, the novel, with the namesake title, was written by a Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro (石黑一雄). Born in Japan, Ishiguro spent most of his life in the UK, and his novels do not have a strong connection, at least on the surface, to Japanese culture, as he admitted that he was rather unfamiliar with that culture. But I think the East Asian thoughts have a subtle influence on his writings. The meditative, plaintive, and even somewhat fatalistic tone in his Never Let Me Go is a good example. Life is not just to confront, but also to comply with. There is beauty in such thinking - the so-called “mono no aware” (sorrow on things, 物の哀れ) in traditional Japan. Things like the blossom of sakura are beautiful, but also ephemeral. So is our life, and death that ensues. Instead of striving to improve life or trying to avoid death, the simple observation of them, and the reflection upon them, are truly beautiful.
With that thought, let me finish by citing a line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus:
Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene.
