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Okay, so I saw Atonement yesterday (liked, didn’t love), but my father and I are having a dispute about the “fake” scene. Doesn’t the “Three Weeks Earlier” subtitle give away the fact that the scene between Briony, Robbie and Cecilia never happens? We’re taken from the scene where Robbie is ill to the confrontation between the three, with the subtitle indicating that it occurs three weeks earlier. Maybe I have the timeline screwy, but how would that have ever been possible?
I started doing the timeline in my head during the film and thought I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but it made sense at the end since it was fabricated.
Remember that Briony has already seen soldiers coming back from Dunkirk before she goes to visit her sister.
The spoiler appeared in mouseover, so I added space at the beginning of the post to counter that.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I believe I know which bit you’re talking about.
This is explained if you read the book: Briony is the narrator, an elderly, successful novelist, and has decided to write about her guilt in stark detail. In the epilogue of the book she reveals that the scene in which she truly atones for her sins was a fabrication, but since the people and the story now exist only in her mind (and similarly, the scenes where Cecilia and Robbie are alone in the narrative are based on speculation only), then she feels compelled to allow them assuage her guilt, even if she subsequently admits that it was wish fulfillment.
I cannot stress enough how good this book is. Don’t read it in public, though, as you might end up like me, sobbing uncontrollably on a train. Very embarrassing.
Yes, jjimm, you’re right, but still one would assume that the movie authors would give a timeline that would prevent the viewers from thinking “that’s impossible! how can Robbie be in two places at once?”
I thought that the “three weeks ago” intertitle preceded these scenes (I am of course discussing the timeline presented in the movie - I haven’t read the novel)
Briony seeing the first soldiers returning from Dunkirk, and sitting at the bedside of a dying French soldier;
Briony sitting at the wedding of her cousin and Mr. Chocolate Factory owner;
Briony visiting her sister Cecilia and Robbie (the day after the wedding - we know it’s the day after the wedding because she tells Cecelia and Robbie that the wedding was “yesterday”).
If my recollection is right, then this is feasible, because we don’t know how much time passed between Briony seeing arriving soldiers from Dunkirk, and Briony being at the wedding. It may have been several weeks.
Now here is my argument with the denouement of the movie: is the atonement the fact that Briony decided to forego school to become a nurse, or is it the fact that Briony wrote a book finally revealing the truth? If the atonement is the writing of the book, then I’ll just say that it wasn’t much of an atonement - she waited to publish the book until just before she was going to die! She should have revealed the truth much sooner. Even if Cecilia and Robbie are dead, there are people that have known Robbie in real life (friends from school, Cecelia’s family, Robbie’s mother) that deserved to know the truth.
P.S. I really liked this movie.
I was of the opinion that a not insignificant amount of time passed between the “three weeks earlier” bit and the arrival of the first soldiers from Dunkirk. At least a few weeks…
As I say, I haven’t seen the film (yet).
I got from the book that it was the writing of the book. Because the book was so painful to write, it took her her entire life. ETA: And was intended to be published posthumously.
Neither. She doesn’t actually atone at all, given she can’t even reveal the truth in her novel. The atonement is as much a fabrication as the ending of the book. I don’t think we’re supposed to walk away from the movie believing she has successfully atoned for her sins, otherwise she would have written the book as things actually happened, rather than seeking to put herself in a better light within it.
But she does reveal the truth in her novel - in McEwan’s book at least.
I need to ascertain whether people posting to the thread have read the book (and I need to watch the movie, obviously), because having read it, some of the answers are obvious.
It’s a conceit that the whole book is “by” Briony. There is no dispassionate narrator - Ian McEwan is absent.
Briony therefore also wrote the epilogue where she admits that the atonement chapter is fabricated. And Briony casts herself in a terrible light in “her” book.
Of course, if the filmmakers messed up the explanation, then it’s a different matter, but that’s the basis for how the novel is constructed - and Briony’s authorship is a great twist, to be even more spoilerish about things.
I’ve read “Atonement” twice – first time I didn’t like it much; 2nd time I loved it. Will see movie as soon as it comes near me.
My take on above discussion: I don’t think Briony ever atoned for what she did. The writing was her attempt. I think she was even revising to the end – possibly inserting Robbie and Cee at the birthday party – but I don’t think she was under any illusion that she was really atoning for anything. If anything she imagined what would have happened if she had really atoned.
And I thought in the book there were three points of view: 1st section, omnipotent narrator. 2nd section, as if written by Briony. 3rd section, Briony’s POV.
I missed the editing window but meant to add - Briony didn’t publish or tell the truth during her lifetime because she was afraid of libel suits from her cousin and factory owner guy. so she never did have any backbone
I’m afraid of going to see the movie - I’m afraid I’m going to jump to my feet and shout BITCH! at the screen. :smack: The book was well-written but I hate Briony so much I can’t bear to read it again.
I haven’t read the book, but I definitely hated her in the movie. As a child she reminds me of the Bad Seed. She’s slightly more tolerable as a young woman, but even then she comes off as rather stupid.
In order to hate Briony you really have to feel for the lovers, and McAvoy and Knightley totally sell it.
jjimm - (I haven’t read the book) In the movie, we have, at the very end, Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) talking to an interviewer and she says “I wrote this autobiographical book, but changed the story so that Cecilia and Robbie do meet after Dunkirk and live happily ever after, to give them a chance at happiness that they never had in life, and because otherwise the end was too depressing. In fact Robbie died at Dunkirk and Cecilia died in a tube station which was flooded during the German bombing of London.” However she is revealing this in an interview that is presumably after the publication of the book, so I inferred that the truth about the fates of Cecilia and Robbie was not in Briony’s book. She also says in the interview that she only has a few months left to live.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Atonement is supposed to refer to her book, but then again her book was written so late in life that it seemed like too little too late. I suppose we are meant to understand that she suffered greatly when writing the book, and was remorseful for the rest of her life for what she did.
I was quite upset with Briony until I saw the scene where she throws herself in the pond in a 13-year-old’s misguided attempt to get attention from Robbie. You can almost see her heart break when Robbie gets furious with her (after saving her) and lashes out at her, calling her stupid and irresponsible.
If that’s the case, you’re not going to like the movie. She doesn’t tell the truth in the book, but only in an interview after the book was published. Since only a tiny fraction of readers are likely to watch an interview like that, it hardly counts because most readers won’t realize that her version of events aren’t the truth.