Atonement

[dangermousie]

Just got back from Atonement.

Wow. Wow. It's heart-breaking, and romantic, and visually incredible.

If this doesn't win Best Picture, I will...I will...nothing of course. But it should.

Oh. Oh. Oh.

I loved the book to pieces and this is the perfect adaptation. This is how you adopt a book.

I liked all the three Brionys (as actresses. I loathe the character with unholy passion) and Keira Knightly was elegant and vivid as Cecilia but the one I ended up thinking about the most was Robbie.

Oh Robbie. Robbie. RobbieRobbieRobbieRobbie.

James McAvoy is incredible as this amazing person, first young and hopeful, and then damaged and through hell but still so good.



I had to go to the ladies' bathroom and cry in private afterwards.

I have talked about the story before, when I was discussing the book so here I will mention just the images, the incredible images, like gorgeous stills to be framed and hung on the wall: the silouette of Cecilia in her deep green dress, or Briony's red cloak, or Robbie standing in front of that old movie, his bowed shadow because he's had too much to be able to bear it.

There are so many scenes: Robbie in France, coming across the dead school-girls, and despite everything he's seen, everything that's been done to him, the sheer decency and humanity, and the look in his eyes as he weeps for them.

You know what strikes me: he and Cecilia are so young. They are ridiculously young in the library, when they are overcome by their newfound love and the sheer giddiness of feelings being reciprocated (when he asks her 'why are you crying?' and she replies 'don't you know?' GUHHH)

Or the surreal things he imagines as his wounds take hold.

That incredible shot going for minutes, at Dunkirk.

The scene in Cecilia's apartment, when he is confronted with Briony. How do you even relate to someone who's ruined your whole life? I love that Cecilia is able to call him back to himself during that scene. He is not the golden boy that he is in the first part, confident and sure. Oh, the scene in the cafe with him and Cecilia, when they meet for the first time in years, because he's been let out for the training: the way his hands shake, and the way her eyes look at his face, relearning him. And how he is so defeated and unsure and oh...Briony's lie took so much from him, from both him and Cecilia. And Cecilia breaking through his terror with the surety of her love.

I love Keira in this. Sometimes she comes as too mannered an actress, a little smug, but not here. Here she is young and passionate and irresistable. I buy the epic love between Robbie and Cecilia, her loving him without seeing him for years, his utter dedication to getting back to her, in part because I am a little in love with Cecilia and Robbie, both, myself.

All the three actresses who portray Briony are excellent: the pale, preternaturary nosy, over-dramatazing child. The curiously colorless young woman, living only through others. Elderly Briony who still hasn't learned her lesson that words are not the same as life, and it's no amendment to create a fictional happily ever after. But I don't want to talk about Bri because I hate her too much.

Was this even coherent?

Here is a fan-made, unspoilery trailer:

Comments

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

I just looked this up on Wiki because I wanted to know what this was truly about and read, "In the last few pages, we learn that, although they are reunited in the novel, Cecilia and Robbie presumably were never actually reunited – Robbie dying of septicaemia on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia being killed in The Blitz – and that Briony probably never went to see them to make amends for her lie, though the speaker is very evasive here."

Well. That's just horrible. It makes me want to cry and I haven't even seen or read the story. No wonder you hate Briony. O_o

Depression in mind, the movie looks fantastic and I'm sure will be a frontrunner this awards season. Keira and James are beautiful together, too.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's a gorgeous movie and they are.

Actually, it's pretty clear in the book they died and in the movie it's made even more explicit.

[fire-snake.livejournal.com]

I could have understood if Briony had done what she did out of spite or jealousy. That would have shown her ability to emote on some level. One can argue that if she could feel such powerfully negative emotions at that time, then she would be open to very strong positive emotions later. It would have given depth of feelings and compassion to her atonement.
However, her whole character carries a stamp of a young naturalist who catches a butterfly and tears its wings for no particular reason, then throws it away because it no longer entertains her. A few days later, she comes across of the dead butterfly and think that it shouldn't be lying on the open, so she takes it to the bushes and hides it behind the leaves. In her mind, that takes care of the problem in its entirety.
It is a thoroughly depressing book.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but the trailers had some stunning visuals.

[bluehyacinth.livejournal.com]

I know I am in the minority here, I taught the book to a group of freshman last year it was the same case there, but I feel a lot of empathy and sympathy for Briony. It always seemed to me that she has her own tragedy in this.

She seems to me to be the precociously bright thirteen-year-old who only thinks she understands the adult world when much of it is entirely beyond her grasp. She can conceptualize romance and villainy, but not carnality or complexity. She turns her world into narrative as a child (and as an adult), but as a child she only has access to the simplest of motives. She does what she does because she honestly believes her understanding to be true.

The people who insure that her words will be taken for fact, her co-conspirators as it were, are driven by far less innocent motives: her mother out of revenge against her husband and class-based hated, her cousin out of self-serving desires, the actual villain from the most obvious reason...

I shudder to imagine what might have happened had the certainties I held at thirteen been put into action in the world. And in a cross-genre notion I think of Harry Potter's certainties in Prisoner of Azkahban or Lyra's in The Golden Compass (which, come to think of it, do bite her in the ass).

Anyway what makes Briony credible at thirteen, her youth and the support of those around her, make her entirely incredible once she achieves a more truly adult understanding.

She has no real chance to atone, and never forgives herself, even in the close of the work she is "not so self-serving as to let them forgive" her.

What always struck me the most is that in retrospect, she herself is responsible for the portrait of her young self as foolishly reprehensible. She spend her entirely life paying for what cannot be repaired.

Gah...this novel kills me every time.

Cannot wait to see it.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in all fairness:

a. Just because Briony is not the only one at fault, doesn't mean she isn't at fault. More than one person is at fault (the rapist, for one) but in a way, it's easier to understand ruining the life of someone if you have a concrete motive (like not wanting to go to jail yourself) as opposed to attention-seeking and pique (that scene where Briony sees Robbie come back with the twins and is POed because now people won't believe her story and do their grown-up things? UGH)

b. Briony's Mom might not be keen on Robbie, but neither she nor others have reason to believe a child would lie. I know if a thirteen year old said she saw something like that, I wouldn't think she made it up.

Also, Briony is 13 not five. I remember being 13 very well because that was the age at which we immigrated to the US, so it's a very bright-line age for me, and I can't imagine doing something like what Briony did and (most importantly), it wasn't one blurted out time, she kept saying it and repeating it and repeating it, all the way to the trial.

Also, she has never done anything about it. She didn't go to even apologize to Cee before her death. She didn't even want to publish the book until she died because she was afraid to be sued. My heart does not bleed for her.

Re: it is her writing that portrays her as foolish. Yes, but then we enter into 'unreliable narrator' mode: we should either take most of what 'she' says at face value or none...

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

That description of Briony is perfect. Of course, those 'naturalists' are at least younger than briony.

[fire-snake.livejournal.com]

I started watching a Russian TV series that I like to the point of having finished half of it in one day (7 episodes, I guess it also makes me OC:).

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Which is...

[fire-snake.livejournal.com]

Ликвидация (2007)
Сюжет фильма: Маршал Жуков в опале. Он отправлен в ссылку в Одессу, где нет житья от воров, убийц и вымогателей, а дерзкая безжалостная банда “Степные волки” повадилась грабить военные склады. И всем заправляет неуловимый немецкий шпион Академик, которого никто не знает в лицо. И только начальник угрозыска Гоцман и Жуков могут спасти город. Они задумывают сложную и опасную операцию…

[artic-fox.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you've said. I had read the book prior to seeing the film, and it was wonderful to see an adaption that was somehow still so vivid, and yet stuck so true to the original.

There are so many scenes: Robbie in France, coming across the dead school-girls, and despite everything he's seen, everything that's been done to him, the sheer decency and humanity, and the look in his eyes as he weeps for them. -- this is a scene that stuck with me too. James McAvoy is amazing.

And as you said, it needs to get a whole truckload of Oscars, especially seeing it is so visually stunning. Some of the shots are so ethereal, especially the beginning of the film, and that tracking shot was just amazing.

But yea, basically - agree with you 100%.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

This was amazing.

And yes, some of the shots. I think the part in Northern France was my favorite: so desperate and surreal.

[artic-fox.livejournal.com]

What makes me laugh is that a lot of the Dunkirk scenes were actually filmed in the north of England, in Redcar. I have been there and is astonishing to see what they have managed to do.

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

I'm looking through all your Atonement entries (can you tell? hee!) and I must say the thing that was most striking to me through the film were the beautiful images. It's rare when a movie is full of so many incredible shots that you literally feel as if you could freeze-frame practically every scene and turn it into a portrait, but this was one of those. It's absolutely stunning. The use of colors is striking, too - the flowers in the vase; the poppy field; child Briony's consistent white; Lola's hideous shades of pink, which get her into so much trouble; the red of older Briony's cloak; the vivid green of Cecila's dress, both beautiful and a metaphorical manifestation of Briony's envy.

And the rest of this I so agree with. I love Keira and James, and all three actresses playing Briony were superb (as much as I disliked her character and felt her penance was not enough, I actually pitied her at the end, which surprised me). The romance between Robbie and Cecilia is quite simple, really, yet completely believable. You believe they are in love, you believe they understand the truths about each other, you believe each nervous gesture, each time they hold hands, each time they kiss. They presented it in such a small, intimate way and it was perfect. When he runs after the bus, when she almost embarrassedly tells him she can't remember how much sugar he takes, when she tells him she loves him in the library, each time she asks him to come back, each word he writes to her. ( Dear Cecilia. Dearest Cecilia. Cecilia. Her name is all he needs.) It's all very honest. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking. I really lost it when Robbie said to his Army friend, "You won't hear another word from me," because I figured that was probably the point where he died and I hated it for him. His character is charming and bright and his whole future gets blotted out by a child's ridiculous lie. The scene near the end, in Cecilia's flat, where he snaps at Briony and Cecilia calls him back to himself I actually think is made all the more impactful because it's imagined - I think that's how you know Bri really is sorry, because the way she imagines them and writes them feels true. If that scene had actually taken place, would it have been any different? I don't think it would. The tragedy is that it was never allowed to happen. Bri is delusional, too - when she says she gives them their happiness, I bawled, because she didn't give them anything. She took it all away. And gave a fantasy to everyone else.

How much did I adore that final scene at the beach, though? It hurt a lot, but in that sort of good way, if that makes sense. And being the hopeless romantic, I'd like to imagine that living in their cottage by the sea was their heaven, in the end. Sort of like the cookie scene at the end of Titanic , which I've always seen as Rose and Jack being reunited - their own home by the sea is that last special place for Robbie and Cecilia (and they don't have to wait for it nearly as long as Jack and Rose did).

Also, the score. Sweeping, haunting, simple. Perfect for the film.

I'm so so happy this won the Golden Globe last night. (I wish everyone could have been there to accept it! Gah.) This and Sweeney (which, biased as I am, I also think is one of the rare films chock full of gorgeous still frames) winning makes me a happy fangirl. I hope we get an Oscar ceremony. *fingers crossed*

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

and turn it into a portrait, but this was one of those. It's absolutely stunning.

That is so what I thought.

I love your comment on the use of colors, especially Cecilia's green dress.

You won't hear another word from me," because I figured that was probably the point where he died and I hated it for him

Oh yes. I knew that this was where he died and I lost it so much. All that promise and goodness and talent totally wasted. And his fixation on getting back to Cecilia, his lifeline. Oh.

I hate Briony in a rare way I usually don't hate fictional characters. And her hubristic (I know it's not a word), absurd idea that she gave them a happy ending, that it makes no difference is...*stab* Even at the end of her life, she cannot distinguish the true reality of other people, that they aren't characters, they are flesh and blood. Nothing outside of herself is truly real.