Saturday, May 10, 2008

Atonement

We watched Atonement last night, the movie version of Ian McEwan's extraordinary novel. I've mentioned the book before in this space. I can't claim any expertise in this area because I read very little contemporary fiction, but I will state, for what it's worth, that Atonement is one of the finest novels I've ever read. The only other recently published novels - and by recent I mean in the past fifty years - that I recall affecting me in a similar way were Edwin O'Connor's The Edge of Sadness, and John Williams' Stoner and Augustus. I've read four other McEwan books and, while all fine, none match the breadth and scope of Atonement. It is McEwan's tour de force.

It is always a difficult thing for a movie to live up to a masterpiece of literature. It's rarely been done. The problem is that movies are a visual medium. The stories they tell are told primarily in pictures and actions. Words and dialogue are secondary. There is a maxim in screenwriting that dialogue should be used only when the writer cannot convey what he needs through pictures; show, don't tell. Now, movies have never been monolithic in this way. Certainly there are excellent movies that rely heavily on dialogue for their success. One need only think of the screwball comedies of the thirties. But they are the exception rather than the rule. Most movies rely on action, events that drive the story. Words simply fill in the blanks. That's why, when transferring a book to a movie, it's much better to start off with a second-rate novel, or pulp fiction, or any book where events take precedence over the character's inner thoughts. Think of The Godfather.

Great literature, on the other hand, exists primarily in the mind of the narrator and the characters. It is an internal medium; the heart of the story is conveyed through thought, and words. The action, the actual events that pull the story along, is often secondary. What we look for in great literature are insights into the human heart; revelations about human nature; and, of course, the quality of the prose. Take this passage, chosen nearly at random, from Atonement:

He would have to speak to her soon. He stood up at last from his bath, shivering, in no doubt that a great change was coming over him. He walked naked through his study into the bedroom. The unmade bed, the mess of discarded clothes, a towel on the floor, the room's equatorial warmth were disablingly sensual. He stretched out on the bed, facedown into his pillow, and groaned. The sweetness of her, the delicacy, his childhood friend, and now in danger of becoming unreachable. To strip off like that - yes, her endearing attempt to seem eccentric, her stab at being bold, had an exaggerated, homemade quality. Now she would be in agonies of regret, and could not know what she had done to him. And all of this would be very well, it would be rescuable, if she was not so angry with him over a broken vase that had come apart in his hands. But he loved her fury too. He rolled onto his side, eyes fixed and unseeing, and indulged a cinema fantasy: she pounded against his lapels before yielding with a little sob to the safe enclosure of his arms and letting herself be kissed; she didn't forgive him, she simply gave up. He watched this several times before he returned to what was real: she was angry with him, and she would be angrier still when she knew he was to be one of the dinner guests. Out there, in the fierce light, he hadn't thought quickly enough to refuse Leon's invitation. Automatically, he had bleated out his yes, and now he would face her irritation. He groaned again, and didn't care if he were heard downstairs, at the memory of how she had taken off her clothes in front of him - so indifferently, as if he were an infant. Of course. He saw it clearly now. The idea was to humiliate him. There it stood, the undeniable fact. Humiliation. She wanted it for him. She was not mere sweetness, and he could not afford to condescend to her, for she was a force, she could drive him out of his depth and push him under.

How do you convey a passage like that to the screen? Answer: you can't. A master director could perhaps convey something close, something approximate, but it must be changed, altered in some way to fit a different medium. And still, some things will be missed.

And that is the story of Atonement, the movie. It seems to get everything right, but still, somehow, something is missing. The movie is extremely faithful to the book; all the main events, those necessary to the successful telling of the story, are there. The character of thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis is played extraordinarily well by Saoirse Ronan; she makes us believe the crucial point about the character, Briony's "sense of obligation, as well as her instinct for order", along with her passion for stories, for make-believe. For without that, the story Atonement tells would fall apart. Briony's crime would seem far-fetched otherwise. But we believe this Briony, as portrayed by Ms. Ronan, is capable of it.

The movie also gets the eighteen-year old Briony, played by Romola Garia, right; the casualties of the war have jolted her out of her books, and plays, and fiction, and into the real world. She understands how monstrous her actions were, how much harm she has caused. The other main characters, Cecelia Tallis and Robbie Turner, are played perfectly by Keira Knightly and James McAvoy. The scenes of the Dunkirk evacuation are memorable, worthy of an epic. The scene in the hospital where Briony holds the hand of a French soldier who's had half his head blown off, is extremely well-done, and is essential to our understanding of Briony's transformation from young fabulist to adult realist. She gains humanity in our eyes here.

But it is all too late; her actions can never be undone. In the denouement, Vanessa Redgrave plays Briony as an old woman. She talks to the camera. She knows she is dying, and she is aware that her sin as a thirteen-year old girl has defined the rest of her life, and other's lives, and is what must be atoned. But the crucial moment when she tells of the fate of Cecelia and Robbie falls flat. It's not really a fault of the movie makers. It is simply another of those moments that a movie cannot do justice to. In the book, this moment felt like a punch in the stomach - it knocked the wind right out of me. In the movie, if feels like an afterthought, a wrapping up, and the emotional sting is gone. Unfortunately, as well-done as it is, that can fairly be said of the entire movie. Read the book instead.

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