Atonement

Life without the cross

ATONEMENT
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy
Cert. 15

A friend, on hearing that I’d been to see Atonement, the much-trumpeted version of Ian McEwan’s novel, asked, ‘It’s not a Christian film, is it?’ Well, the answer, is clearly ‘no’, but on this earth people, whatever they believe, cannot help but write and think about God, they cannot escape thinking about their sin and its consequences.

This is an extremely powerful film, which, as it explores the tragedy of life without real atonement, delivers an emotional killer blow.

On the hottest day of 1935, in the opulence of a country house, a 13-year-old looks out of her bedroom window and witnesses an event which will change her life. Briony is a prim and imaginative girl, writing plays and instructing others to act them out.

Devastating effects

So, as she sees her older sister and the son of their housekeeper break a valuable vase together, then sees her sister strip off her outer clothes to dive into the fountain where a piece of the vase has fallen, she forms her own ‘story’ of events, misunderstanding the relationship, with devastating effects. The heady atmosphere of this day is brilliantly captured in the film, with the lushness of the countryside, the languid, but brittle, house guests, and an effective score which is dominated by the noise of a typewriter.

Wartime

The second half of the film is set five years later, in a changed Europe. A sandbagged London, a pristine hospital filled with the injured, and the dangerous retreat to Dunkirk are shown, as the three key characters attempt to ‘come back’ in different ways. I can’t say too much without spoiling the plot, but, again, the acting is superb, and the devastation of war conveyed painfully. The result of Briony’s storytelling is seen in the horror of bloody bodies and broken relationships. Briony’s naivety and the excess of the wealthy are alike destroyed. In the end we are whisked to 1999 and the story tied together in a very satisfying way, with an excellent, if brief, performance by Vanessa Redgrave.

Read the book

The film is incredibly close to the book, dialogue lifted straight out and the tiniest detail represented (with one understandable change at the end). However, the novel has depth and detail which a film cannot hope to convey. If you haven’t read it yet, do try before you see the film. The film reminded me how brilliant the book is and, since seeing it, I’ve reread most of the book. The themes of storytelling, of confession and of making good, the way in which we are so clearly not kings of our own destiny, all evident in McEwan’s other works, are explored here. In the book, Briony asks at the end, ‘How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her … The attempt was all’.

All we can do is try

And though this paragraph is ostensibly about storytellers, it fits all of us. In turning away from the only one who can actually atone, we take on God’s role and write our own stories, creating our own versions of reality, and then we cannot atone for our sins. It is clear that confession and hard work, all the washing and cleaning cannot cleanse Briony’s conscience. All she has is her attempt, all we have is our attempt if we will not turn. The Christian should weep more at this film than the unbeliever, not because of what the lovers lost, for indeed they are not the innocents, as is assumed by McEwan and the film, but because of its real presentation of the bleakness of our condition without God.

Sarah Allen

NB. Before you rush out with your home group to see the film on account of what I’ve written, please do remember that it is certificate 15. There is one scene of a sexual nature and some language which some may find upsetting. I did not find them excessive; rather, they are necessary for the plot, but you have been warned!