Last thoughts on Atonement
Jan. 18th, 2010 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erastesOk – what I didn’t like about Atonement (I thought the photography was very beautiful, but as I say, it was filmed as “I’m going to win an Oscar for this” - i’ll need to read the book now to see if some of those images were in the book.) was that it didn’t—to me—have anything to do with Atonement. As I say, perhaps this was deliberate, and perhaps the title was entirely ironic, but (cut for spoilers)
Perhaps the fact that the characters of Cecilia and Robbie seemed like paper dolls was because that’s exactly what they were to Bryony – perhaps that’s deliberate? As I say, I’d need to read the book to get a fuller idea – it’s hard to get the author’s vision from a film because the director may be leading you down an entirely different path.
It was the appropriation that upset me—that somehow she thought that by inventing a fictional ending for them was in any way a substitute for 3 and a half years of prison as a child-molester.
I can understand why a child would have done what she did, children are good at doing things and then simply forgetting about them, so I’m not saying “evil child” – children can do the most appalling things, and if she had anything like the lifestyle that the Mitfords had for example, right and wrong were probably things she picked up by osmosis rather than anything else.
So she writes this book, where the characters behave and sound like paper dolls because that’s what she sees them as, characters that be shaped to suit an ending that absolves HER – because if they have a happy ending, then somehow her guilt can be razed. It’s no more than RL fanfic and just as intrusive and horribly wrong. But perhaps that’s actually the point. I can’t blame Bryony for Robbie and C’s deaths, because Robbie would have joined up anyway – and as a housekeeper’s son, no matter how well educated, he’d probably be a private. Perhaps C wouldn’t have died in Balham tube station because perhaps she’d still have been at home, but it’s more likely she would have been in London, or even at the front doing things, so she may have died. What essentially then, Bryony has (apart from sending a man to prison for something he didn’t do) is guilt over not managing to make things right with her sister, and not (as it seems) EVER owning up to what she did to the authorities. Getting adulation and TV exposure because of this is probably indicative of our society, rather than anything else. Granted Lola couldn’t have given evidence against Paul, but Bryony still should have made those statements.
Also, rehashing the entire thing using everyone’s real names means that probably (given the age of Bryony) that all the main characters were dead – so what’s the bloody point? Other than to upset the families left behind?
And finally – two points that I made in comments to my last post:
1. Who has a fountain ten foot deep?
2. I found it extremely contrived that Cecelia had to a) fill the vase with water herself, considering they had a billion servants and b) had to walk across the park about half a mile to the fountain to fill it up. No running water in that palace was there? (However these points may be explained in the book – perhaps she sees Robbie in the park and uses it as a pathetic excuse to go and talk to him)
However, it’s rare that a film makes me ruminate over finishing it for so long. I’ll get the book and see if that’s any different in essence.
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Perhaps the fact that the characters of Cecilia and Robbie seemed like paper dolls was because that’s exactly what they were to Bryony – perhaps that’s deliberate? As I say, I’d need to read the book to get a fuller idea – it’s hard to get the author’s vision from a film because the director may be leading you down an entirely different path.
It was the appropriation that upset me—that somehow she thought that by inventing a fictional ending for them was in any way a substitute for 3 and a half years of prison as a child-molester.
I can understand why a child would have done what she did, children are good at doing things and then simply forgetting about them, so I’m not saying “evil child” – children can do the most appalling things, and if she had anything like the lifestyle that the Mitfords had for example, right and wrong were probably things she picked up by osmosis rather than anything else.
So she writes this book, where the characters behave and sound like paper dolls because that’s what she sees them as, characters that be shaped to suit an ending that absolves HER – because if they have a happy ending, then somehow her guilt can be razed. It’s no more than RL fanfic and just as intrusive and horribly wrong. But perhaps that’s actually the point. I can’t blame Bryony for Robbie and C’s deaths, because Robbie would have joined up anyway – and as a housekeeper’s son, no matter how well educated, he’d probably be a private. Perhaps C wouldn’t have died in Balham tube station because perhaps she’d still have been at home, but it’s more likely she would have been in London, or even at the front doing things, so she may have died. What essentially then, Bryony has (apart from sending a man to prison for something he didn’t do) is guilt over not managing to make things right with her sister, and not (as it seems) EVER owning up to what she did to the authorities. Getting adulation and TV exposure because of this is probably indicative of our society, rather than anything else. Granted Lola couldn’t have given evidence against Paul, but Bryony still should have made those statements.
Also, rehashing the entire thing using everyone’s real names means that probably (given the age of Bryony) that all the main characters were dead – so what’s the bloody point? Other than to upset the families left behind?
And finally – two points that I made in comments to my last post:
1. Who has a fountain ten foot deep?
2. I found it extremely contrived that Cecelia had to a) fill the vase with water herself, considering they had a billion servants and b) had to walk across the park about half a mile to the fountain to fill it up. No running water in that palace was there? (However these points may be explained in the book – perhaps she sees Robbie in the park and uses it as a pathetic excuse to go and talk to him)
However, it’s rare that a film makes me ruminate over finishing it for so long. I’ll get the book and see if that’s any different in essence.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 02:49 pm (UTC)And I like my version (http://antychan.livejournal.com/89539.html) much better. xD
But, I think if you look at Redgrave looking at herself in the mirror, old!Bryony knows can't it ever be enough. At least I felt that's how the actress played it.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:30 pm (UTC)So she writes this book, where the characters behave and sound like paper dolls because that’s what she sees them as, characters that be shaped to suit an ending that absolves HER – because if they have a happy ending, then somehow her guilt can be razed.
Yes. That seems to be exactly what she's doing even though, as you pointed out, their deaths can't be ascribed to her involvement, the fact that Robbie spent three years in prison for a crime he didn't commit most assuredly can.
I have no idea who has a ten-foot deep fountain, but I'd be curious to meet them. ;) And, yes, the reasoning behind Cecilia's wandering out there is basically what you said and it's explained in the book.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:06 pm (UTC)and regeneration has Jonny Lee Miller in it
the books are fabulous, seriously, blow you away, read one chapter a week in an attempt to savour them good
and the main character's gay
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Regeneration-Trilogy-Door-Ghost-Road/dp/0140257683/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263830571&sr=8-8
i read both of those about ten years ago and remember thinking I couldn't be doing with atonement (I didn't watch the movie because kiera knightly makes me just want to forcefeed her lard and cake, it's actually disturbing to look at her) but i loved regeneration
the movie's a little cold, which the book isn't, but it works better
Regeneration is about the officers in WW1 going to Craiglockhart for psychiatric care, and Siegfried sassoon teaching wilfred owen to write from his heart. I HIGHLY rec it
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 06:01 pm (UTC)It's been quite a while since I read it, but my reading of it was that Briony knew that she could never actually atone for what she did. At the time, she was young and extremely sheltered, with an imagination in super drive, and when confronted with such--to her mind--crude and blatant sexuality in Robbie's note, things seemed possible to her that just the day before were not. That note changed her life, how she viewed the world she lived in and even her own burgeoning sexuality. To her, that note represented the fact that Robbie could be the type of animal who would attack and rape someone, where as the day before he was a friendly sort, maybe even the type she had a crush on. In one day, Briony's innocence is gone--on two-fronts. Any maturity she could have hoped to achieve is inextricably bound up in the guilt she feels over trying to right what she thought was Robbie's wrong (the note to Ce) with another wrong (accusing him of rape).
And, if I'm remembering correctly, Robbie and Ce were already dead when Briony first wrote their story. As the reader, you only see her as a very old woman looking back (you spend like 350 pgs with young Briony and then Robbie in France and maybe 3 pgs with Briony as an old woman where you finally learn the truth) and while she knows it's not enough, writing the story was the only form of atonement she knew how to give.
I think it's easy to say that what Briony did was wrong and "that somehow she thought that by inventing a fictional ending for them was in any way a substitute for 3 and a half years of prison as a child-molester." But I think the story (from the book, as opposed to the movie) is a lot more nuanced than that, and I don't think she does think it is a substitute for true atonement. True atonement was out of her grasp the minute R and C died, or maybe the minute the police took R away. Or maybe her true atonement was living a long life with guilt as her constant companion?
I don't know, this is just how I think of it after reading it as a teenager and discussing the themes and motifs in it for a month (since it was required summer reading). It would be interesting to read this with adult eyes!
no subject
Date: 2013-09-29 08:05 am (UTC)But I think the real crux of the matter is that at least in the movie cause I didn't read the book, why did they just walk away and leave Briony standing there? There was no explanation. Now granted this was the 30s, people didn't talk about these things. But they didn't even stop to threaten the child into silence?
Is it possible that an alternate reading of the movie is that the sin was actually on Ce and Robbie for letting their passion be expressed at the wrong time and in the wrong place and then not owning up to it so that a traumatized child wouldn't go off the rails?
I mean if looked at that way, the atonement was all done by Robbie and Ce. Briony really wasn't guilty of anything except being a child and not getting any adult guidance. So maybe Robbie and Ce deserved their deaths. Because why didn't Ce ever speak up and say "I had sex with Robbie in the library" wouldn't that have given him an alibi? Perhaps not. But the letter combined with his relationship with Ce and the fact that he'd been looking for and actually found the twins would have cast doubt on the charge, put his character in a better light, and made Briony seem unreliable.
Again who really sinned and who was really atoning?