[lit-ideas] Atonement
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:32:15 -0500
I would like to start this thread on the film by J. Wright, based on the novel
by McEwan, scripted by Hampton, starring Keira Knightley.
Superb.
Where would I start?
The film got the best Golden Globe (i.e. for best film), and I hope it makes
for the Oscar.
Keira is superb and having just finished my first reading of the novel, I was
nicely surprised as to how greatly she portrays the character -- at all levels,
including the Libertys (the costume).
AOL is offering a live interview where she expresses how she got into the
character.
The other characters are also beautifully portrayed. The whole photography is
magnificent, but then the best tradition of British films will have that.
McEwan's novel is full of erudite (well, er...) references to things such as "G
& S", "V & A", Piazza Barberini vs. Piazza Navona (Barberini Triton), French
porcelain, Battle of Dunkirk, etc.
The film actually improves on the erudite references. For example, if I were to
select a second-best scene, it would be the soldiers (actually Bede School
Choir) singing -- to some odd but beautiful transposed harmonization -- what
the BBC survey recently had as England's most beloved hymn, "Dear Lord and
father of mankind" -- which was written in Massachussets -- and for
Massachussets!
The novel was published in 2001, although it is meant as a saga of the 20th
century, with the epilogue being signed, "London, 1999". This is incidentally,
the best scene in the film with a magisterial Vanessa Redgrave being
interviewed by Minghella!
The blurbs describe the novel as featuring a most 'erotic' scene. I thought it
would mean the meeting (indeed sex act) in the library -- where orgasm is
reached on both parts -- but on second thoughts I would think the author meant
the 'two figures by the fountain' scene. This is not explicitly sexual, but
possibly one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole reels of English (and I
say English and not British) film history EVER.
---- The dialogue is very good, and am looking forward to Feb. 4 where the
script by Mauritius Islander C. Hampton will become available. McEwan
flourishes his crisp dialogue with explanations of Gricean implicatures, which
are nice, but possibly _too_ nice, and I would think memorising the Hampton
lines would be a better exercise.
The novel is bound to become a best-seller, but if not, who cares, and is
available for $8 in the Anchor edition. So I encourage readers and listers to
this list to buy it, read it (it will take an hour, or less), and share
comments with this forum. Ah, and don't forget to see the film, which is still
showing and who knows when it will be available on DVD.
The soundtrack is apparently available already, but I still must check how
locally and whether the Dear Lord and father setting _is_ included. As I hope
it will.
I would compare the novel to two Argentine authors:
??? a. J. L. Borges
??? b. J. Cortazar
Of Cortazar, the novel reminded me of Blow-up, and in general, the idea of the
untrustworthy witness of a pluri-hermeneutic episode. In the Two Figures by the
Fountain sequence, it's all about what what you _see_ can be rendered into
terms of -emic or -etic interest. This becomes a serious crime thrilling side
to the film, with prosecutors included and all.
McEwan is obsessed (and rightly so) with the factivity of 'see' and its
connection with 'know'. The questionnaire to which Brionny Tallis is subjected
(herself the protagonist of the thing) reminded me of "When did you last
see...?", the famous painting, that also trades on the ambiguity (if such it
is) of 'see', and Grice/Warnock's "visa".
Of Borges, the connection with be with the meta- and auto-phoric reference of
the works of imagination. Brionny is an imaginist ("a hysteric fantasist", in
the description of her older sister, Cee) but the only occasion in her life
where she was _required_ to speak the truth, she does not. The boundary between
artifices of verosimilitude and truth are common Borgesian concerns, and this
is also stressed by the circularity of it all that would also remind readers of
"The House of Spirits" of "Hundred Years of Solitude", with their acknowledged
consideration to Borges.
The film or thing is not just about love, but mainly love. And I was amused by
the Anchor edition mentioning the different categories under which the work was
catalogued when first issued in 2001. As I recall it went into:
????? 1. Battle of Dunkirk -- Fiction on.
????? 2. Ex-Convicts -- Fiction on.
????? 3. Guilt -- Fiction on.
Atonement is possibly the key word and relates to the idea of the writer
(Borgesian one) as God -- and how can God need an atonement? Indeed she does
not! The film has been translated into Spanish as 'redemption' (redencion)
which is just as well.
There is some vast (well, er...) biblio on this which you can read on McEwan's
personal page, including what look like some boring high-school guides
(including the York notes) for the thing, by which one can tell that it is
already making history as far as the boring Eng.Lit courses go!
Swimming pools feature large in the film. Notably at the Tallis/Cartwright
stately home, and where pool is meant literally as a natural (or semi-natural
thing) to dive, or plunge into. Not the typical Roman balnearium thing.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
??? The Swimming Pool Library
????? Villa Speranza, Bordighera,
???????????? and Buenos Aires, Argentina
?????????????????????????
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