Film language as a way to visualize psychological experiences in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go”

Abstract

The paper examines the use of cinematographic means of expression in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go” to convey the internal psychological experiences of the characters. The research aims to identify how film language techniques (montage, change of shots, focusing, subjective camera, etc.) are transformed into literary methods of narration and contribute to the audiovisual and emotional impact of the text on the reader. The scientific originality of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, Ishiguro’s cinematographic prose is considered in connection with the representation of psychological states: it is shown that montage nonlinearity, visual details of gestures and facial expressions, as well as symbolic images of the environment, perform the function of displaying memory, trauma, and emotional instability of the characters. The research findings showed that Ishiguro’s visual poetics not only gives the text the effect of “watching a movie”, but also becomes an instrument of psychologism. The novel “Never Let Me Go” is characterized by a high level of cinematographic quality: fragmented nonlinear narration, detailed description of facial expressions and gestures, symbolic images of the environment – all this gives the reader the impression of “watching” a movie. Associative montage of memories and symbolic images of the environment create an effect of immersion, thanks to which the reader becomes a “viewer”.

Research materials

1. Исигуро К. Не отпускай меня / пер. с англ. Л. Мотылева. М.: Эксмо, 2005.

References

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Author information

About this article

Publication history

• Received: September 9, 2025.
• Published: October 24, 2025.

Keywords

• роман «Не отпускай меня» Кадзуо Исигуро
• литературная кинематографичность
• визуализация внутреннего мира героев
• литературный киноязык постмодернизма
• поэтика визуального
• Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go”
• literary cinematographic quality
• visualization of characters’ inner world
• literary film language of postmodernism
• poetics of the visual

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)