Beauty & sadness side by side in 'Atonement'
May 14th 2008 06:22
Atonement is a film graced with beautiful images and connections, mischievous connotations and ironic and shocking surprises. Twists of betrayal and crime become evident as the film progresses.
Although I haven't read the novel on which the film is based, I thought that one theme in the film was targeted extremely well and that theme was focused on a child's (Briony's) innocence being taken away. At the beginning of the film we feel almost awkward about the proper behaviour, posh accents and words of the children - they seem spoilt and annoying. Towards the end we realise that one girl's love for the theatre and her drive of imagination disappears after a series of events that lead her to confusion and despair.
One of these events involves a mistaken letter which makes her believe her older sister's lover is a sex-crazed maniac. This is made worse when Briony walks in on her sister Cecelia pushed against a library wall of books by her 'lover' Robbie Turner. This scene was very intense. We wonder if 13 year old Briony is going to run out, cover her eyes or run up to the couple, but of course time stands still in this 'mouths-open' stunned, kind of way. What do you do in that situation? Cecelia put her leg down, put her foot back into her shoe that was so erotically removed in the previous shots, fixed her delicate green dress straps and left the room, trying to keep her dignity and her sister's young mind, in tact. Robbie did up his fly, rearranged his jacket, proceeded to walk past Briony, stopped for half a second as if to turn and talk to her and kept walking as if thinking to himself it was too hard to explain or apologize... or do anything! This was perhaps the moment that would have saved his relationship, and his life.
The film plays on ideas of what a couple of words can do to the thoughts of a child, and the effects which follow - which in this case lead to lifetimes of disaster and great loves lost.
Water plays a vital role in the film, from keeping flowers alive, to losing lives, to being desperate for a drop, to losing broken pieces of a vase, risking lives and the pleasure of being surrounded and blocked from the outside world.
War brings dryness - death, disaster and horror. Water brings content, health and leisure. Inevitably its water that kills both Cecelia and Robbie. One is literally hit by the force of water and one is so dehydrated of water that they never wake up. I may be looking into this water thing too far, however it seems to me that water brings things full circle - from the time that Robbie and Cecelia flirt around the water fountain to the time that Briony tests her crush to see if he will save her from drowning, to the time that a nurse cries watery tears in a corner after the return of soldiers who are bleeding to death, water flows through the film and through the characters.
The tagline 'You can only imagine the truth' connotes confusion about reality and fabrication of events and characters. Who can be trusted? Can the life of one man depend on a 13 year old girl? Time lapses and repetitions make the viewer think they have deja-vu when in reality we are seeing different perspectives of the same thing. This might relate to how Briony feels. Maybe she knows exactly what she sees but her imagination provides her with different perspectives.
Fiction plays a role towards the end of the film, in an imaginative way. We don't realise it is fiction until the very end of the film. Then we are left to feel confused ourselves - are we sad at the reality, are we happy for Briony and her ways of dealing with a lifetime of guilt? Are we happy to imagine how the two lovers would have continued?
This film plays on the viewers' emotions and imaginations. It makes you cringe at the bloody wounds of the soldiers. It makes you gasp when you see who the young red-haired girl marries. The initial letter which was a private 'one-man' joke; a mistake; a blunt statement on the female body - so definitely printed from a type-writer, was to me a stark contrast of the true love that Robbie and Cecelia had for one another. In some ways it was just using a crude language (for shock value) to define biological needs and desires that every human being possesses.
The film made me feel warm and fuzzy when Cecelia whispered to Robbie 'come back to me' on several occasions. Only somebody who has been away from the one they truly love can understand the real meaning behind those words.
------A film to make you ponder life's meaning and your own emotions-------
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