atoning

Atonement is a lush melodrama with colors so bright that you can only try to open your eyes wider. The lips are blood red, the grass emerald green, and the heat a foggy gray. Clearly directed by Joe Wright of Pride and Prejudice, this movie is aesthetically pleasing and well-shot, the sharpness of the story softened by the various camera angles. The movie is pretty superb for someone (myself) who hasn't read the book in all of its subtleties and cleverness. The characters themselves are almost too beautiful to even exist, from Cecilia's pouty seductiveness to Robbie's wholesome young man image with his sleeves rolled up. The only character to be presented without beauty but with astonishing singularity is Briony, Cecilia's younger sister. As for the costumes, Keira Knightly's green laser-dotted dress is marvelous (the many replicas that they used for the shoots), but her ephemeral blouse and skirt in the fountain scene truly embodied the character.

There was something wonderful and almost frightening about Saoirse Ronan's portrayal of the young Briony. I would go so far as to say that her performance goes beyond 'prodigy'. Briony is definitely not a character that you like, but she's very gifted and intriguing. There's more depth in her character's fanciful daydreams than in most people. If anything, I thought that she was so excellent that I couldn't dredge up any sympathy for her later in the movie. Keira Knightly and James McAvoy also shone in their respective roles, especially James McAvoy. There was so much tension and rawness in every scene that they were in together. Although they have so few scenes together, you could clearly feel the loss and desperation when they were apart.

Atonement makes you think about the human condition, and I came out of the movie thinking that Briony never did sufficiently atone for her misdeed. First, my belief was that she knew what she was doing that fateful day. I do think that thirteen year olds can distinguish between right and wrong. However sheltered she was or however imperfect her family life was, she grew up as a privileged and spoiled child who willfully committed a wrong because she wanted her life to be as interesting as fiction. People are perfectly welcome to do whatever they want for themselves as long as it doesn't involve others. Briony clearly knew what sex was, although she may not have known love. The ending was clever and supported the story's theme of the dangers of pulling reality into fiction.

I want to read the book precisely because of this conceit. A work of fiction pointing out the dangers of fiction and never quite redeeming fiction in its ending. By enjoying the story, are we not sinking more deeply in the quicksands of imagination? By even writing Atonement, is Ian McEwan invalidating his own work?

It's not certain that the direct effects of Briony's crime were as terrible as we perceived. Of course, Robbie spent several years in prison as an innocent man and fought in WWII. However, given that so many Brits fought in WWII, it seemed unlikely that he wouldn't have volunteered or been drafted. Cecelia was also estranged from her family as a direct result, but wasn't that for the best? For God's sake, how could she possibly stay in such a dysfunctional family? The actual heinous crime is Briony not speaking up for the next seventy years and barely admitting the truth at the end. I'm not debating the fact that what Briony did was terribly wrong and that she kept on doing wrong things afterwards, but events just completely spiraled out of control.

In essence, there is something similar between Ian McEwan's Atonement and Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. Both of the stories involve a normal person committing a terrible act without fully understanding the consequences. In the latter novel, the main character knows exactly what he is doing and why but is still shocked at the unpredictability of later events. Both stories are quintessentially English and deal with the stifling class structure and societal demands. The difference is that the characters do atone themselves in The Painted Veil, while the chance never comes in Atonement. Well, I suppose that it is all open to interpretation. Both stories tell of the twisted relationships that people have and are vaguely frightening. There's something grotesque floating among the characters, even some within the characters themselves. You see it in Atonement. The colors are almost too bright and slightly uneasy. Both are very modern in their ability to unsettle the audience greatly through unconventional means.