Atonement

“But the effect of all this honesty was rather pitiless, you see… I couldn’t any longer imagine what purpose would be served by it…by honesty… or reality”

Those words were uttered by the main character during the final scene in the English drama film titled “Atonement,” which is adapted from a novel by English writer, Ian McEwan that is set during the World War II era in English countryside and France. I don’t think I’ll write the plot or storyline summary here… I suggest you watch the film yourselves… What I would like to comment is on the power of a drama depicted either through novel, film, or theatre play to penetrate and depict the depth of human soul and complexity of life.

Two scenes jumped out at me in this film, one is when the English male leading character, after several years joining the battle of WWI in France, finally gets to arrive at the evacuation site at the beachfront (Dunkirk) where he and several comrades found all the English soldiers ready to be evacuated back home to England. The music scores, the graphic depiction of human soldiers on the brink of emotional fatigue and collapse due to fighting a long war mixed with hope of soon coming back home to the loved ones, and the uncut camera movement floating gracefully for almost full 10 minutes has created poetically poignant scenes.

The other scene would be the ending when the novelist whose act the film title referred to, tried to make an act of atonement through writing a biographical novel baring all the terrible acts she has committed when she was 13 years old, which resulted in the separation of her sister from her lover, the male character who was sent to war above. The scene is where she is interviewed by a TV station to promote her latest work (the “atonement” novel). In the film’s story, the novelist (central character) tried to make amend to her past by writing a fictional account of what would happen if her sister and her lover managed to reconcile again after separated by the war and the novelist managed to come clean with them about what she did to them. In her own words, she said “So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out in life, I’d like to think this isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness… I gave them their happiness.”

All being said, I think the opening quote above brilliantly captured all the intricacies, contradictory feeling, sadness, and universality of human emotion felt by a character. A drama at its most glorious moment… Great ending!