Atonement: There May Be No Substitute For What Was

Atonement: There May Be No Substitute
For What Was
by Dileep Rao

A circle is perfect. It has a single center and is evenly round in all directions. Life, however, is often more complicated. Life is elliptical. Newton proved it with the planets, Joyce showed us life unrounded in Ulysses. Some works are so elliptical we just see the slightest grace of its curve in our purview. I think of 2001. Then there are the works that are perfectly elliptical. Such is Joe Wright’s film Atonement.

This film is very nearly a great film. It has purpose and meaning that are powerful and unpredictable. It tells its story in an extraordinary curve, one that begins in a small strange place and ends in the heartbreak of non-redemption. The framework of the film is that of longing, desire deferred and in its place…nothing. Possession and happiness are not the same thing and both can be contravened by events beyond our control.

The picture begins on a landed estate in England, 1935. The housekeeper’s son, Robbie (James McAvoy), has been schooled by the lord of the manor (in this case a very real politician who stays very much offscreen) and now thinks of perhaps becoming a doctor. He is, of course, in love with the lord’s daughter Cecilia (Keira Knightley), whose hauteur and petulance keeps them apart.

In a surefooted sequence, Robbie inadvertently confesses his attraction to Cecilia on a carnal level and this moment is the ballpeen climax that shatters her indifference. They make love, or very nearly do, but are interrupted. The youngest daughter, Briony (Saoirse Ronan)—a precocious literary firebolt—witnesses the event, misinterpreting what she sees and implicating young doctor-to-be Robbie in a horrific crime. He is railroaded to jail as class asserts its privilege to punish whom it sees fit rather than the inquiry justice may inconveniently require. Shortly thereafter, he is sent to the front.

The tragedy of this film is that he and his love are parted for so long and the crime lies with the young girl throughout her life. Love, attachment, desire makes us do things wondrous strange and this film portrays those moments, choices, blurts and ecstasies on sheer accident. As that young girl grows up and carries that tragedy with her and incorporates it into the death and destruction of the war, their inherent unfairness and the arbitrary roots of lifelong suffering.

Atonement often breaks time, a feature at which film excels. Cause and effect are reversed in several circumstances to strengthen the source of cause and belie the effect in almost opposite fashion. It challenges the idea of fate and of process. The film as a whole crisply unfolds the question of personal history; perhaps it has no real narrative or perfect shape other than its beginning and end. Between are the whispers and crimes of life, intentions and lost possibilities that may or may not ever have been.

Dileep can be reached at dileep@babblog.com.