Fourteen years since the film was first screened
St Andrews, cradle of nearly as many golf players as students, has many secrets. Whether the spectre of South Street is real and not the invention of one-too-many drinks mixed with a powerful imagination, or whether the Northern Lights are accompanied by some type of impressive phenomena that make them disperse as soon as I arrive are two of the biggest mysteries.
That the Andrew Melville hall was the set for some scenes of the movie Never Let Me Go (inspired by the 2005 homonymous book by Kazuo Ishiguro, who is a St Andrews honorary graduate) is apparently one of those secrets that our small town has been hiding from us.
Fourteen years ago, the North Haugh hosted the cameras of Mark Romanek, and the actors Cary Mulligan, Keira Knightly and Andrew Garfield (among others), as they recorded the scenes of the eerie Dover Recovery Center, framed by the Scottish sunset. The early night hours watched as the same hallways that, during the semester, are full of students, became the symbolic limbo of the film, tittering between freedom and the manacles of society. Shot in July of 2009, the building’s brutalist style has now become emblematic of the “completion” of the film’s donors (and the studies of its residents).
Dystopian and grim (because these are, surely, the feelings that the architects wanted to express through Andrew Melville), Never Let Me Go follows Kathy’s coming-of-age story at the forefront, while painting in broad strokes the Orwellian society that is set as the backdrop of her life. While permeated by a quintessentially British experience (Kathy’s early teens are spent at a traditional boarding school) – the awkwardness of the teen years (the love triangle, even if it’s most definitely not an empirical experience for teens, is appreciated) and the slow descent into adulthood with the melancholy it entails for the loss of childhood – this story of growing nostalgia is eventually pushed aside to introduce a commentary on society and utilitarianism. The value of existence and the source of humanity are explored, while the audience is exposed to a world where life is a consumable good. In other words (and without spoilers), Ishiguro and Romanek partnered up to break my heart.
So, fourteen years after the first screening of Never Let Me Go, we look back at the history of St Andrews to appreciate how a picturesque town has found itself imbued in such idiosyncratic anecdotes and wait to see what the synergy of uniqueness will offer us next.
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