Ian McEwan is particularly good at the short novel: a work of fiction that can be read in one (longish) sitting. In fact, several of his books have to be read in one go because once you’ve started you can’t put them down. Amsterdam is a prime example of this: a short novel constructed with clockwork precision, and which snaps shut at the end with a satisfying click.
I realise I’ve mixed my metaphors there, but seeing a McEwan novel as a kind of clockwork trap or lock is not a bad description of his work. His 2001 Booker Prize winner, Atonement, though, is something of an extension to this model. The first part is very much in the patented McEwan pattern, a rivetingly readable novella with a devastating twist. But it’s as though he wanted to go beyond what he was already very good at, to spread his wings a bit. So, in Atonement, we get two more sections that work out from the first part, going in new directions, and then finally an epilogue, set in 1999, that in turn revises all we’ve read before. The whole novel is very much about storytelling and the pros and cons of imaginative invention.
Atonement is now an Oscar-nominated film, expertly scripted by Christopher Hampton and marvellously directed by Joe Wright. James McAvoy (fresh off that other excellent literary adaptation, The Last King of Scotland) takes the role of Robbie, the son of an upper-class English family’s housekeeper. He has received some educational charity from the family, which has elevated his social position — leaving him, inevitably, in a somewhat ambiguous position. (There is a brief scene with his mother, played by Brenda Blethyn, and for all its brevity it speaks volumes — and is quite heart-rending.) He is clearly more interesting and vital than any of the toffs of her own class available to Cecilia (Kiera Knightley), the family’s gorgeous older daughter. You can already predict that there will be something in the air between her and Robbie. And then there’s Briony, Cecilia’s younger sister, who has literary ambitions at age 13 as well a novelist’s eye. Her perception of what is going on between Robbie and Cecilia will have momentous consequences.
This story starts off in the mid-1930s with the shadow of ‘Herr Hitler” and the coming war looming over what appears to be an aristocratic idyll: a world of Victorian-Gothic country mansions, home dramatics, fancy cocktails and cut-glass accents. The personal tragedies will be woven into the international catastrophe of war; it’s significant that the part of World War II we see is a major setback for the British army. The themes imbricated here are not just those of class relations, love, passion and jealousy, but also the role of the implicated observer — and the work of the literary imagination.
Hampton and Wright put the first part of the story together with great skill. Two instances of a sort of narrative time-slip are masterfully handled; they are key aspects of the story in that they show us single events from different perspectives, making clear the gap between the observer and the participants. Later, when we’re into the war, the cinematography itself seems to move into a different register and to expand into an almost surreal view of the insanity of war. There is an extraordinary one-take shot that weaves through a huge scene of the defeated British troops desperately waiting for rescue at Dunkirk.
The music is also especially well done. Composed by Dario Marianelli, it integrates the sound of Briony’s typewriter into the music — a beautiful blend of what is known, in film studies, as the diegetic (what’s in the story itself, perceived by the characters) and the extra-diegetic. In itself, this blend highlights the theme of observer and observed, the story and the storyteller.
Overall, Atonement offers pretty much all you could want of a serious but engrossingly entertaining movie — apart from the virtues mentioned above, there are superb performances from everyone in the picture. Knightley is perfect as the slightly brittle beauty nicknamed ‘Cee”, developing nicely out of her previous film with director Wright, Pride and Prejudice. McAvoy is a very strong screen presence: he packs a great deal of intensity (and charm) into what seems a smallish frame. Perhaps the most difficult job is to provide meaningful continuity between the three people who play Briony over the course of her life, from 13 to elderly, and that job is managed very well indeed by Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and — well, I won’t say who plays her finally, because it was a pleasant surprise when I saw the film. (I don’t think she’s even officially credited.)
I’ve also been reticent about the plot, as the reader might have noticed — the plotting is so careful that it is a pity to reveal even what an ordinary review has to reveal about such a movie. If you haven’t read the book, Atonement will contain many powerful narrative surprises; if you have, it provides a brilliantly realised vision of the story, and a deeply moving one at that.