View image Celia (Keira Knightley). I have a question about these kinds of dresses: Are they meant to be worn more than once? Don't they get dirty and wear out pretty fast, dragging around on the ground like that?
My dog ate the book. Well, not really, but when I was about 200+ pages into Ian McEwan's 350-page "Atonement," my copy somehow disappeared. I found it weeks later, in a dark corner under the bed, and by then was already on to something else. I put it aside, intending to pick it up again soon, but the next thing I knew months had gone by and I was on my way to the Toronto Film Festival where a movie called "Atonement" was being screened.
While watching Joe Wright's intensely cinematic interpretation of McEwan's book (co-executive-produced by McEwan and written by Christopher Hampton, best known for adapting "Dangerous Liaisons," "The Honorary Consul"/"Beyond the Limit," "The Quiet American," "The Good Father), I kept wondering how far into the story I had actually read. Every once in a while something would happen and my memories of the book would snap into place. But by the end (actually, by the point Robbie reaches the beach and goes for a drink), I had lost any literary moorings and was completely immersed in the movie.
Actully, I was immersed in the movie from the beginning: a shot that follows a parade of toys on a little girl's bedroom floor to the desk where she sits before a typewriter, composing her first play, "The Trials of Arabella." Using a typewriter as a musical instrument in the score may sound a bit precious, but it works cleverly and hauntingly in "Atonement," the story of a 13-year-old girl -- an aspiring writer -- who enlists her extended family in her imaginative productions... with, as they say, disastrous results. Her "ruthless innocence" (in a phrase used, I believe, by Kathleen Murphy) spurs her to miscast the roles in a melodramatic fantasy-scenario that's beyond her understanding. And yet, once she imagines it, she sticks to her story, and crushes lives with her godlike (author-like) will.
This is the story of the uncomprehending gaze of pretty blonde Briony Tallis, how fixes her subjects like insects pinned to a board -- as in a repeated shot of her cold blue stare through a windowpane. She frames a scene in her imagination and fits it into a false outline of events. The moment is stunning in the true sense of the word -- but among the many things Briony doesn't realize at the time is that she is freezing her 13-year-old self in the same instant. She determines the consequences of what she has witnessed, and what she has imagined, and in those moments has locked herself into her own existential coffin. For the rest of her life, no matter what she does (or writes), she will never be anything but that 13-year-old girl, stuck in the past.
"Atonement" is an intelligently, evocatively directed movie in every aspect, from the adoring ways in which the romantic leads are photographed (who would have thought James McAvoy could be filmed as gorgeously and lovingly as Keira Knightly?), to a long take along the shore at Dunkirk that is one of the most complex and emotionally shattering single shots in movies.
I don't want to say much more now, until we can have a more detailed discussion about the last ten minutes or so. But as I wrote in a comment earlier, I wasn't sure the 2,000 or so people at the public screening in Toronto's grand old Elgin Theater were reading the ending the way I did. When I got home, I delved into the epilogue of the book (it gives nothing away to say it's set in "London, 1999") and discovered that Hampton and Wright had conceived an impressively cinematic way to transform what is, almost by definition, a thoroughly literary conceit. I think the ending of the book is even more devastating than the film's. But let me say this much: It's based on a moral tale by Ian McEwan, the man who wrote "Enduring Love," a book (and a fine movie) with a similarly ambiguous title. "Atonement" may describe its subject as acutely as "Do the Right Thing" describes what Spike Lee's movie is about....
Jim, I was interested in seeing this movie just from seeing who was making it (Knightley and Wright did a great job with "Pride & Prejudice", and McAvoy seems like an interesting actor), but you've put me into a "can't wait to see it" type mode. A comparison to "Do the Right Thing" (one of the most powerful of movies, I think) seemed out of left field to me, but as I haven't seen "Atonement" or read the book, maybe it's not. To me (though I don't think it's how Spike meant it) "Do the Right Thing" was about showing you what the right thing is by showing you the wrong thing. From the time Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out come into Sal's near the end, nobody does the right thing. I had such a powerful response to "Do the Right Thing" that if "Atonement" is anything nearing that, then it'll have been worth the wait.
I'm incredibly interested in seeing this film, now. Atonement is one of my favorite recent novels, and, when I had heard that the ending had been altered, I was a little miffed (as you say, the ending is absolutely devastating). I was worried that, well, they'd completely re-written it. It doesn't sound like that from your post--at least, I think I'm reading you correctly, that they maintained the spirit if not the letter. And it's especially good to know that McEwan was involved with the production (I had only seen on IMDB that he wasn't the screenwriter and stopped there). Thanks for posting on this film--I'd pretty much given up any hope of its being good.
When I got home, I delved into the epilogue of the book...
Really? Without finishing it?
It wasn't clear from reading, whether you finally completed the book or whether (I'm guessing) you skipped right to the ending and epilogue.
JE: Funny, we're having this discussion elsewhere about the role of storytelling (under "Two Cents in 'The Fountain'") where I said that the story may pull you through the first time, but if you go back to a book or a movie again, you do it more for the writing or the filmmaking (or the performances or whatever). I did check out the epilogue of "Atonement" first (since, having seen the film, I knew where THAT went), then returned to where I'd left off in the book and read on from there. Not the way I'd normally read -- I assure you! But in this case I felt I needed to know how McEwan solved the ending before I could write about the movie. Normally, if I know a book is being made into a film, I don't read the book until after I've seen the movie, because I want to have the movie experience un-colored by my impressions of the book. But that's just because I primarily write movie reviews and citicism, not literary reviews and criticism...
I like Ian McEwan books, but after reading the third book written by him, it made me wonder:
"Is it impossible to make write an excellent contemporary novel?"
It seems all of his books rely on a breakdown in communication that is completely unbelievable in the age of iPhones.
I love Seinfeld, also. I think it left the air at the right time if for no other reason than the overwhelming majority of the plots don't work if everyone is carrying a cell phone.
I guess I could ask the same question about movies...
I thought "Atonement" was a great book, for the most part. I got what he was going for at the end, but I remain unconvinced that there wasn't a better way of going about it. At the same time, judging by the title, that ending was the entire purpose of writing the book, so...I don't know. I guess I shouldn't say any more. I'm very curious about the movie, though.
I liked the film of "Enduring Love", but only in retrospect. I think the novel is a masterpiece, so I wasn't quite able to appreciate the film on its own merits at the time. I can now, though. If you haven't read the book, though, you should.
Glad to hear about "Enduring Love" which I haven't seen or read; I don't recall really great reviews for book or film but since I loved "Atonement" (book) and was fascinated by "Saturday" (hard to love that one) I'll definitely check out the earlier one. As for the ending of "Atonement", I guess it's been too long for me to remember specifics. I remember finding it quite powerful, at any rate.