Atonement
by Catherine Lee

Atonement, the screen adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley, is a movie I approached with trepidation. Wright and Knightley have worked together before on the recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. To my taste, their “interpretation” of that novel and its heroine was so awful that I walked out of that film in disgust. But after seeing Atonement, they have achieved a measure of atonement for that distorted mess of an adaptation. 

Pride and Prejudice is a novel I love and have read many times. Atonement is a novel I haven’t read, but Atonement is the kind of movie that inspires me to pick up the book. The complex issues and events presented in the film – misinterpretation and misunderstanding of events, the power of a lie, the unreliability of any storyteller and, most powerfully, the concept of atonement – are beautifully handled in the film, and I imagine are handled with even greater nuance and deeper exploration in the novel.

My familiarity with the original text no doubt colors my ability to appreciate the screen adaptation, but Atonement has a crucial advantage as well. The screenplay for Atonement was written by Christopher Hampton, who won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay of the novel Dangerous Liasons. Adapting novels is Hampton’s specialty. He also wrote the screenplay for the excellent recent adaptation of The Quiet American and for other films like Carrington, The Secret Agent and Mary Reilly. His adaptation of Atonement received an Oscar nomination. 

Adapting Atonement and making it an appealing film is no easy task. Any film that begins in England in the 30s is headed for tragedy, and any member of the audience with any sense of history knows it. The trajectory of Atonement is a relentless tragic downward spiral, but Atonement manages an amazingly redemptive, graceful and satisfying ending. 

Atonement begins in 1935 on the large and lovely country estate of the Tallis family. While all is serene and beautiful on the surface, there are tensions and troubles brewing. It’s a hot summer, and everyone is a little cranky in the heat. The family is preparing for the visit of their elder son and a dinner party they will hold in his honor. The family is hosting its cousins, two rambunctious young twin boys, and their teenage older sister, who are all stuck with the Tallis’s while their parents’ divorce is making headlines. 

At the center of Atonement are two sisters – Cecilia, the older sister, has just returned home from college. As Cecilia, Knightley lounges around the house in spectacular clothes, smoking cigarettes, unaware and uncertain of what to do with herself. Her younger sister Brionny, played in these early scenes by Saorise Ronan (who recevied an Oscar nomination for this performance), is a precocious, spoiled and demanding would-be writer who has just finished writing her first play. 

Brionny, still a child, carries herself with the attitude of believing the whole world belongs to her. Cecilia, who has seen a bit more of the world, again, doesn’t quite know what to do with herself. This difference between them helps cause the tragedy that woefully alters their lives. 

Also on the estate is Robbie Turner. He is the son of their housekeeper, but because he is a bright young man the father of Cecilia and Brionny has paid for his college education. He’s working on the estate as a gardener, trying to decide what to do with his life. He’s also in love with Cecilia. James McAvoy gives a moving, memorable performance as Robbie, capturing  the character’s humble roots and confident ambition. 

Brionny has a big crush on Robbie, and they are friends. Cecilia is unaware that she is in love with Robbie. Brionny wonders why Cecilia ignores him when they used to be friends. 

Brionny witnesses and misunderstands a couple of incidents between Robbie and Cecilia, and when a crisis erupts later in the evening she willfully puts the blame on Robbie. The result is that Robbie is sent to prison and Cecilia is estranged from her family. By the time Robbie is dragged away in handcuffs, Cecilia is only too aware that she is in love with him, that she has been for some time and that she has been rather rude to him as an unconscious defense mechanism to avoid her own feelings. 

Atonement jumps around in time several times. We see the events that shock and confuse Brionny from her perspective and from the perspective of Robbie and Cecilia. 

Then Atonement jumps forward four years. World War II has begun and Robbie has been let out of prison to become a soldier. Though they aren’t speaking to each other, both Cecilia and Brionny are in London. Cecilia is a nurse. Brionny is in nurse’s training. For Cecilia, nursing is a livelihood now that she has renounced her family. For Brionny, this is his first act of atonement for behavior that she now understands. She knows she has ruined Robbie’s life and her sister’s chance for happiness. 

Robbie has promised Cecilia that he will return to her. He is separated from his unit and makes his way to the coast to be part of the evacuation of Dunkirk. The misery and chaos of this terrible chapter in the war is beautiful, which is to say, horrifyingly portrayed in Atonement. While it is all too likely that, even without Brionny’s lie, Cecilia and Robbie wouldn’t have escaped the tragedy of the War unscathed – who did? – their story adds layers to the kinds of complicated social change that is also part of the history of the very bloody last century. 

But what sets Atonement apart from a typical war story or a typical doomed love story is the last scene starring Vanessa Redgrave as Brionny, today, as her life is dimming. Brionny has become the successful writer she dreamed she’d be, but the story she tells of herself, her sister and Robbie at the end of this movie makes an already heartbreaking story even more pitiless. 

I say Ms. Redgrave “stars” in this role because her brief appearance steals the picture. She makes all the misery that has preceded her tale worth the trouble. Her plea for atonement is full of all the contradictions we imperfect humans can’t escape.

Copyright 2008 Ad Media Inc.