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ISSUE:    Philology. Theory & Practice. 2025. Volume 18. Issue 10
COLLECTION:    Foreign Literature

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

Tatiana Sergeevna Orlova
St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design


Submitted: October 24, 2025
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”.
Key words and phrases:
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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