This is a stunning and disturbing piece of work which packs a huge emotional punch. Whenever a favourite novel is turned into cinema there are worries that the film-makers might get things wrong. But in this case Kazuo Ishiguro’s thought-provoking and heart-wrenching story has been done great service by all concerned.  

We are in a parallel, dystopian Britain towards the end of the twentieth century. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy are young teenaged pupils in a rather idyllic boarding school in a lush country setting. Only slowly do we realise that there is never any mention of parents, or of holidays, and that the outside world, to them, is something of a forbidden mystery. These children have been kept apart, and the reason for that is determinedly grim.

We follow the trio into their twenties, through their passions, their hopes, their fears, their separations and reunions, and ultimately their doom. It is true that to fit feature film length the plot has been compressed, and the slow peeling away of layers of meaning which Ishiguro excels at has been somewhat curtailed, but crucially the tone is just right, and the lump-in-throat awfulness of what is happening to the protagonists just as powerful.

The three leads are uniformly excellent. As Tommy, Andrew Garfield is rumbustious, big-hearted and uncomprehending. Keira Knightley as Ruth combines brittle superiority, even arrogance, with a vulnerable naivety. And as Kathy, Carey Mulligan is the quietly beating heart of the film: hurt in love, generous in spirit, world-weary and resigned. To this add Adam Kimmel’s superb cinematography and Rachel Portman’s rich score, which is clearly inspired by Vaughan Williams with a few hints of Shostakovich. It is to director Mark Romanek’s credit that all the elements cohere so persuasively.

This is a film which lives in the mind. Science fiction maybe, though it looks nothing like sci-fi, it ponders big questions, in particular how we enrich our lives at the cost of others. I suggest it is a must-see.