What is that very disturbing idea behind Atonement (2008), that those prone to fictionalize may fall prey to their own insecurities, their grudges? The child Briiony holds a grudge against Robbie, the worker on the family estate, and lets that grudge influence her interpretation of the scene at the fountain, in the library, and in the “sexual attack” scene. Not having the nerve to seek forgiveness, she atones for her crime (for it is criminal) through her fiction. She is delighted to write before the accusation . . . but she is obsessed with writing as a young adult. And the hand washing. Is she washing away the guilt? Or the blood of the soldiers she tends. Maybe both. She has no stomach for the mangled condition of some of the men. She has more “stomach” for the guilt she carries inside. Otherwise she would have sought forgiveness. It is as if her writing assuages her guilt too, too much. Writing offers respite from her guilt . . . and in the process, aids her refusal of remorse, she stuffing remorse down inside, away from her daily consciousness, she never having to feel the full impact of what she’s done, not just to her sister and sister’s lover but to her own self. She is never compelled to go in person to her sister’s hovel and beg forgiveness . . . because she writes.
The film is intriguing to me because of that idea. The acting by the three females (Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave) playing Briony Tallis was quite good, and James McAvoy, playing Robbie Turner, gave a solid performance. Keira Knightley’s depiction of Cecilia Tallis was weaker than the others, but solid enough, for playing an ingénue cannot be that easy. But it is the writing concept and the way in which the concept of writing is presented—with the constant clicking of the typewriter keys, the omnipresent rhythm of it, overwhelming the musical score in several places, the relentlessness of it—that is so striking. And the fictionality of the two lovers is strong, they being in love “just like in a book,” madly in love, the one repeating “come back to me” over and over, the literary trope flowing through the story line. The story line, also, plays into the idea of the force of writing, for the timing of scenes is perfect, just the right length, never dragging, never moving too quickly, pressing forward but not running, never dawdling, And the settings, too, very clearly filled with the sense of the past, “just like in an old book,” alive with the colors and objects of the past, and especially striking in the clutter of objects in the rooms of the hospital, the dormitory, Cecilia’s apartment, the Dunkirk beach and resort buildings. Joe Wright is masterful in shaping Ian McEwan’s story. The film works on me because of that but also because it speaks to the poet in me. So many of us fill our lives with fiction, with characters, with poetic personae, with the music and décor and ideas of the past . . . just like in a book.
