The Hobbit - Missing the wood for the Ents

The Hobbit's predecessor/sequel (damn this prequel confusion) The Fellowship of the Ring was an exciting and elegant introduction to the world of Middle Earth and the story of the One Ring. It had a host of memorable characters, suspense-filled action and a genuinely moving finale. It was brilliant.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has none of these things.

Despite my low expectations, The Hobbit still disappoints with erratic pacing, impenetrable exposition and kinetic, confusing action.

Spoilers, of course, follow.

The Fellowship of the Indistinguishable

The Fellowship of the Ring benefited from a steady introduction to the company's number. Frodo and Sam set off and soon acquire fellow hobbits Merry and Pip. The rest of the group join them at Rivendell. This incremental approach allowed the story to get started relatively quickly, and for characters and relationships to be established before more additions were made to the group.

In The Hobbit however, the audience meet the entire band of dwarves almost all at once, with the bulk of them of them literally falling through Bilbo's door in a heap. Unfortunately many of them never escape that figurative heap o'dwarves. At the film's disappointingly cheesy ending, I was still spotting members of the company and thinking, "Gosh, I don't think I've seen that particular follically endowed, vertically challenged chap before."

A long dinner sequence follows their first appearance (with two songs for crying out loud!), but such is the dwarves' number and the speed with which they are introduced that it is near impossible -- despite the film-makers' best efforts -- for the audience to appreciate their individual characters and the relationships between them. This robs the adventure that follows of the required sense of danger and purpose -- it is difficult after all to care about the desires and fates of characters you have barely met.

To be fair to the film-makers, the original source material put them in an unenviable position. No modern film would countenance so many similar characters. When a film requires one character to count up others not once but twice during its running time it is surely a sign that there is a problem. But what could they do? Cut dwarves? Kill some off sooner? A braver adaptation may have done. Behind each of Gandalf's tallies you can almost hear the exasperated voice of the film-maker crying, "Yes! We know, too many dwarves!"

The Two Tones...and other problems

Without the time to give proper scenes to every dwarf, Jackson et al valiantly try to distinguish the band through character design. Each dwarf sports a unique blend of beard and hair, accent and age, weaponry and weight. Yet there are still thirteen of the little bastards (I think? Were there more? You see the problem? I just don't know).

Increasingly cartoonish character designs are embraced to mark one from another. But this clashes with the relatively "grounded" Middle Earth previously established, undermining the richness and consistency of that world by doing so. I watched The Lord of the Rings and could escape into a fully formed fantasy world. That consistency of tone acted as a shield, defending the more mockable story elements from audience mirth. But when that is broken by jarring juxtaposition or uncertainty of tone, the illusion is destroyed and escapism becomes impossible. I never engaged with The Hobbit as I never believed those characters could have existed in that world. Further alienation from the story inevitably followed.

And what of the story?

The dwarves certainly have a clear aim -- to recover their homeland from Smaug the dragon -- but that alone cannot sustain dramatic momentum at this early stage of the story. It is simply too far in the distance.

The Lord of the Rings faced a similar problem of course -- Frodo had a long walk ahead of him to deliver the ring to Mount Doom. However, even when that eventual aim was still half Middle Earth and two films away, the main characters always had a current goal to pursue -- beat the Black Riders to the ferry, reach Bree, cross the mines of Moria etc. There were genuine risks and serious stakes of failure -- each of these staging posts gave the films momentum. Crucially the audience could also see the connection between these mini-aims and the overall quest -- these were no random diversions but obstacles that had to be overcome.

By contrast, The Hobbit meanders. Its on-the-road episodes (some inserted from elsewhere in Tolkien lore) do not so much propel the story forward as bog it down -- they have little connection to the overall narrative, while the characters stumble in and out of danger without any sense that escape has brought them any closer to their overall aim. Not that they are ever in danger. Despite their number it is apparently forbidden that any dwarf be harmed in the making of this film. This saps the action scenes of any suspense, no matter how impressively choreographed those sequences may be. (How to design a meaningless scene -- have characters you don't know or care about performing outlandish actions whose purpose is unclear, facing hordes of disposable bad guys, with no apparent risk of death whatsoever. Welcome to the goblins underground scene!)

Iconic though the scene with the trolls is, for example, it never feels more than a temporary diversion, an inserted "adventure" scene designed to keep the audience from getting bored. Although Bilbo does try to manufacture an escape, the group must still rely on the convenient reappearance of Gandalf at a crucial moment to survive. Sadly this is not the only time a sudden deus ex machina appears to save the day -- the finale of the entire film turns on the appearance of giant eagles, their imminent arrival sucking any sense of danger from the preceding scene.

Compared to the Fellowship of the Ring, by the end of the first part of The Hobbit we have barely begun our journey it seems. Think back on the 2001 film. Think how much had happened by the end of the film. The fall of Gandalf. The death of Boromir. The emergence of Aragorn as a leader. The breaking of the fellowship. But here? Umm. They are a bit closer to the Misty Mountain.

That's it.

The Return of the King

Actually I tell a lie. Some things do change. The film-makers make a stab at significance with the arc in the relationship between Bilbo and the leader of the dwarves, with the latter banishing his doubts of the former with a big manly dwarvy hug. But it feels forced, tacked on to give purpose to the end of the film. 

This is a shame because it detracts from the more effective arc to Bilbo's character that does exist. Through the story he learns or proves the skills he will need in the fight to come -- cunning (in facing down the trolls), thievery (in stealing the ring) and bravery (in his attack on the pale orc in the finale).

Martin Freeman is a delight to watch and the picture noticeably sags when he is lost among the dwarf-schtick or shunted off-screen by the makers' obsession with stuffing every last word from every Tolkien appendix into the film. In reaching for significance and resonance with the wider saga in this way, Bilbo's story is obscured. This is a shame, for in fact it is in his story alone that the connection to the Middle Earth of the previous films feels most believable. The irritating adventures of Radagast and the antics of Balin, Dwalin, Oin, Gloin, Groin, Bon, Ron and Tron are distractions. It is no coincidence that Freeman's scene with the brilliant Andy Serkis as Gollum is by far the film's best.

So overall The Hobbit goes down as a big disappointment in my book. Despite that, I know come next year I will still be lining up to see part two. Peter Jackson is a supremely talented film-maker, responsible for some of my favourite movies. I must have faith that he will build on the positives in this film (however hidden) and that he will deliver next time.

Here's hoping.

Character Introductions -- SPOILERS AND SWEARS ABOUND

Just thinking back on the first episode of what I believe is the Finest Television Show Ever Made - Deadwood. Sorry The Wire fans. If you haven't seen it, go away now, watch the all-too-limited three seasons, finish every episode by saying "how amazing is this?" and then feel bad about your own writing.

Done? Great. Welcome back. Bet you're glad you took those days off work to watch the FTSEM. Now you know I'm right we can crack on.

Because out of the many things Deadwood does extremely well, I just want to look today at a couple of the character introductions in the very first episode, written by David Milch. (NB I am going off the pilot screenplay dated 20th August 2002; there are some differences between this and what was eventually filmed).

Typical of a show that explores the murky swamps of morality, its very first scene introduces the sheriff Seth Bullock preparing to hang somebody. And he's the good guy.

Bullock faces off against a drunken gang of would-be lynchers and insists on carrying out the condemned man's sentence himself. All the while, his more level-headed best friend and business partner Sol Star tries to convince him to leave, reminding him of the riches that await them in Deadwood. It brilliantly set ups Bullock's key characteristics -- his stubbornness, his reverence for the law and his quick temper. More importantly, it reveals this character through immediate action.

That is the key lesson to be taken I think. Again and again Milch introduces us to his characters in the middle of active situations which allow those characters' characteristics and contradictions to be revealed to the audience dramatically and grippingly.

We see it again in the introduction of Calamity Jane. From her first line we are told, as if we needed reminding, that this is not the Calamity of the famous musical:

CALAMITY JANE (O.S.)

What a fucking circus!

Once again it is an active situation that introduces and reveals her character. Their wagon train has ground to a halt on the outskirts of Deadwood and Jane is frustrated. She's dressed like a man and swears like a trooper. She's prickly, belligerent and defensive, especially with her old friend Charlie Utter.

But then the script does something really clever. Straight away, it shows us a completely different side to Jane. Indeed, almost the complete opposite of the character we have just met.

After an expletive-laden antagonistic exchange with Utter she pops her head into the back of their wagon and explains the delay to the passenger lying there -- the legendary Wild Bill Hickok. Jane is in love with this man. It is unrequited of course. Hell, she doesn't even know what to say or how to act. She is meek, servile even, incongruously shy. She still swears of course -- she is still Jane -- but this is a completely different side to her character.

To reinforce the contrast, as soon as Jane moves away from Bill she is back to her old self--

CALAMITY JANE

It's only fucking Wild Bill Hickok you got stalled here in the muck, you ignorant fucking cunts.

Milch's introduction to this important character is simply brilliant. Having just met a Jane who is in many way an hilarious sweary boozy delight, he immediately adds another dimension to a character which otherwise might seem a little one-note. The interaction with Wild Bill shows us the vulnerable person beneath this aggressive mask and implies a whole history between them that we have not seen. Straight from the off we know we are not dealing with simple characters, but ones with depth and contradiction.

This is a useful technique we can use in our own writing - establishing the character a certain way in one aspect of their life such as their work, and then showing the character as quite the opposite in, say, their love life, or their family life. It is something Kubrick did in the script for the unmade Napoleon. There the great general's military acumen and successes are set against his utter failure as a lover, where he is outwitted and cuckolded by another.

But what sets Milch apart is the economy and grace with which these dimensions are explored in the very same scenes as the characters themselves are introduced.

If you haven't guessed it, I'm a fan.

Exploring "Atonement" Part 6

This week I have been posting edited extracts from an extended analysis I did a few years ago of Christopher Hampton's script ATONEMENT. 

Here is the final part, exploring some of the script's characters (spoilers, naturally, abound)

There Is No Briony

Who is Atonement's main character?

Despite the focus on them in the film's marketing and casting (see poster, left), Robbie and Cecilia remain slight characters.

At the beginning of the story it is clear that they are in love, but have not yet admitted this to each other. The reader however is none the wiser as to the reasons for this affection.

Their history as childhood friends and then contemporaries at Cambridge is hinted at initially¹ before being explained in a burst of exposition: ²

LEON

So Robbie the Housekeeper’s son, whose father did a bunk twenty years ago, gets a scholarship to the local grammar and the Old Man puts him through Cambridge; goes up at the same time as Cee and for three years she hardly speaks to him!

There is little else to lend depth to their characters or feelings aside from lingering glances, the sultry atmosphere of the Tallis estate in summer and the generic conventions of a love story.

Indeed, without the novel’s ability to peer behind that façade and understand any inner turmoil, the script is left with what appears to be a thinly characterised central couple. They have no real character arc or development to speak of. They are mostly acted upon rather than personally driving the plot forward.

So clearly we can see, though the commercial considerations we discussed previously may have required their romance be foregrounded, Cecilia and Robbie are not the script's protagonists.

That role belongs to Briony.

She is not initially an attractive character. The Briony we meet in the first act is a horror: selfishly forcing her cousins into performing in the play; demanding attention from all; spoilt and indulged by her mother.³ By the time of Robbie’s arrest, the audience is likely to despise the girl for her destructive lies and the self-righteous, wrong-headed justification of them.

While this loathing is a powerful form of audience engagement, moving through the script such an off-putting protagonist is unsustainable. Indeed, the story requires a level of empathy to be established with Briony by the end of the picture. So, when the script leaves the Tallis estate, a rehabilitation of Briony’s character in the eyes of the audience must begin.

Our first re-acquaintance with her character is thus significant.

When the audience next see her, Briony has been transformed from a manipulative child to a lowly nurse reprimanded for a minor offence by her superiors.⁴ It represents a massive status reversal for the character and is the first time the audience is encouraged to empathise with Briony - it is the first step in winning them back.

This continues throughout the hospital sequence. Briony trimming fellow nurse Fiona's fingernails illustrates not only her ability to make friends (implying that she is no longer such an unattractive person) but also the change in her attitude towards helping others. Earlier in the script, when asked to do something, Briony is wilfully disobedient⁵, but in this scene she gladly helps her friend. This transformation is highlighted cleverly through Fiona’s characterisation as a less reconstructed young lady (‘Mummy always did it for me.’⁶) not unlike the Briony who begins the screenplay.

Crucial to Briony's rehabilitation is her own admittance of guilt and implicit acceptance of the audience’s criticisms:⁷

BRIONY

It’s just...it’s about a young girl, a young and foolish girl, who sees something from her nursery window which she doesn’t understand, but she thinks she does...

Accompanying this confession are the attempts to atone, eventually directly to Robbie and Cecilia, but initially through service to others, such as the horribly injured Luc Cornet.⁸ This scene, one of the longest in the script, is crucial for creating audience empathy with Briony. In it, she is shown in the most harrowing circumstances kindly easing the pain of the Frenchman’s last moments. As he dies, she tells him sweetly, ‘Briony. Je m’appelle Briony’.

If the beginning of the hospital sequence saw the destruction of the Briony we knew (‘There is no Briony.’⁹), then this is the moment that she is reborn and embraced by the audience.

References
1. Briony asks why Cecilia no longer speaks with Robbie; Cecilia and Robbie discuss his future
(Hampton, Atonement, p. 5; p. 11)
2. Hampton, Atonement, p.17
3. Hampton, Atonement, p. 5; p. 2-3; p. 3
4. Hampton, Atonement, p. 66
5. Val Taylor, Stage Writing, A Practical Guide (The Crowood Press, 2002), p. 38-53
5.. Hampton, Atonement, p. 36
6. Hampton, Atonement, p. 67
7. Hampton, Atonement, p. 68
8. Hampton, Atonement, p. 73-8
9. Hampton, Atonement, p. 66

Exploring "Atonement" Part 5

Over the next week or so I'm posting edited extracts from an extended analysis I did a few years ago of Christopher Hampton's script ATONEMENT. 

Here is part five... (spoilers, naturally, abound)

Atonement and genre

Genre. It can get a bad name. The word seems to make some writers blanche -- my work can't be categorised, man! It is but a slip of the pen from that sin of sins "generic".

But if we are to understand why a film succeeds or fails an understanding of genre is vital. The occasionally mocked "script guru" Robert McKee has it right when he states, ‘from the title to the poster through print and TV ads, promotion seeks to fix the type of story in the mind of the audience’.¹ It is partly through this positioning that a script finds a home and film-makers an audience. But with it of course come conventions -- character types, plot devices and style that viewers will expect to feature in the film. Too great a deviation from these can be as damaging as an overly slavish and predictable adherence to the same.

Genre causes problems for Atonement.

Throughout its development there seems to have been a tension between the story that Atonement wishes to tell and the audience that it hoped to find on release.

We have already explored the script's unusual structure and literary themes. Indeed to my mind they are its greatest strengths. Yet, as Atonement's screenwriter Christopher Hampton admits - ‘a pretty, expensive art film about a writer and her very particular sufferings [...] might well seem a hard sell’.²

It is unsurprising then that the film's pre-release positioning presented it as a period romance. Robbie and Cecilia's story is simply a more attractive proposition to a larger audience and such a focus allowed the production to cast bigger names as its "leads".

To a certain extent, scripts such as Atonement require big name casting not only to be produced but also to find a large enough audience to make that production worthwhile. Briony's role is unsuitable to top billing. It spreads over a large age range and required several actors to play. A child actor capable of opening a movie on her star power alone would be a rare find. On the other hand, if it had been decided that the main starring role was to be the Briony of the Second World War, this would keep our lead off-screen until page sixty-four of a ninety-two page screenplay. No production is going to make such a decision. Hence the top billing going to Keira Knightly and James McAvoy as Cecilia and Robbie, characters present from the beginning and throughout the majority of the script.

So we are encouraged to view the story as a romance. We all know what to expect from a romance - a thrilling love threatened by mistakes, misunderstandings and antagonistic forces before a final reunifitcation at the end of the story. Certainly, Atonement fulfils some of these³. However, in other crucial respects, the generic expectations encouraged by the film's positioning are not entirely satisfied.

Again the film's ending plays a key role in this.

The sudden narrative shift destroys audience assumptions about the direction of the story and its possible outcomes. Much of the preceding narrative in which viewers have emotionally invested is suddenly revealed as false. Cecilia and Robbie both died far away from one another, without ever achieving that final unification.

This clash between the generic expectations set up by the script and the eventual outcome is bold. It risks alienating the audience, who will have engaged with the story on the assumption that it is operating within certain recognisable and desired frameworks.

Older Briony of course does attempt to give the couple -- and the audience -- their happy ending:⁴

She thinks for a moment.

OLDER BRIONY

I gave them their happiness.

EXT. BEACH BELOW WHITE CLIFFS. DAY.

ROBBIE and CECILIA crunch across the pebbles and splash gleefully through the waves, below the towering white cliffs on their way back to their white clapboard cottage.

With the knowledge gained in the previous scene, Briony's "happy ending" is bittersweet at best however.

As an attempt to fulfil genre expectations it was always doomed however, because, despite the marketing and the cast billing, this is not Robbie and Cecilia's story at all.

I'll explore this more next time.

References

1. Robert McKee, Story (Methuen, 1999), p. 90
2. Hampton, Atonement, p. vi

3. A beautiful couple, (one upper class, one lower - another classic trope of romance stories) whose incipient love is threatened by Briony and the Second World War.
4. Hampton, Atonement, p. 91-92

Exploring "Atonement" Part 4

Over the next week or so I'm posting edited extracts from an extended analysis I did a few years ago of Christopher Hampton's script ATONEMENT. 

Here is part four... (spoilers, naturally, abound)

Knowledge and Vision

The journey from false belief to knowledge is a vital aspect of Briony's character arc. The key moment which leads to the betrayal of Robbie and Cecilia is her misinterpretation of the fountain scene, where the assumed significance of those events is wildly at odds with reality. Over the course of the script, however, she gains knowledge of what really occurred:¹

OLDER BRIONY

I got first-hand accounts of all the events I didn’t personally witness, conditions in prison, the evacuation of Dunkirk, everything.

If we consider the structure of Atonement, this is a highly suitable theme.

Although it is hinted at, the audience is unlikely to be aware (unless they have read the novel!) of Briony's authorship of the narrative until it is revealed to them. They go through the majority of the script in an analogous position to Briony at the window, viewing events through a prism of certain assumptions.

One of the successes of the unusual structure of the script is that the audience are forced by the ending to confront their own ignorance – they can no longer position themselves at a comfortable and appalled distance from Briony's actions. Instead they are made complicit in the same error.

 References

1. Hampton, Atonement, p. 89

Some thoughts on SKYFALL

Spoilers. Obviously.

First, a confession -- I have never been the biggest Bond fan.

I know they are film "events" and I always do end up seeing them, but I don't follow their production with any great interest, nor do I count down the days until their release. The overblown plots, silly villains, its unchanging, unapologetic main character and questionable attitude to women all turn me off. Die Another Day was a low point and I would not have been overly disappointed had the series retired at that point. I just did not see what it offered modern audiences.

Of course, there was little chance of 007 hanging up his martini glass for good. If there is one thing to be said for the Bond series it is its constant potential for reinvention, untethered by concerns about matching inter-film chronology, tone, etc etc.

So I was open-minded about Casino Royale's "reboot" of the series and was pleasantly surprised by the result. It jettisoned so many of the flabby elements that had led the series astray. Gone were the outlandish villains with their ridiculous plans for world domination. As a character, Bond was accessible and believable as both a cold-hearted killer and a vulnerable human being. And although its finale disappointed, with the film fizzling out after the death of Le Chiffre, it was nevertheless an enjoyable return to form for the venerable series.

Its direct sequel Quantum of Solace I can barely remember to be honest, so I shan't dwell on that.

Which in a very roundabout way brings me on to Skyfall.

Back to the Future...

It has been a good year for British institutions. With the Royal Jubilee and the Olympics, 2012 has not been a time of national introspection but celebration, with the flag, Queen and Country embraced in a way not seen for a generation. As another "national treasue", Bond had to get in on the act, adding an appearance in the Olympic Opening Ceremony alongside the Queen to this, his 50th Anniversary film adventure.

So perhaps it is no surprise Skyfall sees a return to classic Bond features that Casino Royale so studiously avoided - Q and his gadgets, Moneypenny, a shaken not stirred Martini (even if the famous line itself was unspoken). In fact, such is the change it practically counts as a reboot of the Daniel Craig reboot.

A lot of it is great fun though. The thrilling opening sequence that sees Bond rollicking around Istanbul and mounting a train through the unusual medium of a JCB digger is a particular highlight. And it is doubtful that a Bond film has ever looked better.

By the film's end the traditional Bond elements are established, the final scene seeing Daniel Craig's character meet a new male M in his wood-panelled offices, with Moneypenny stationed at the door. It is almost as if Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace represent a penance paid by the film-maker to justify these potentially archaic features; only by stripping Bond down to his basics and then re-building might audiences learn to once again accept an old-fashioned 007.

Silva Lining

Javier Bardem has a ball in this film, chewing up scenery to just the right degree even while sporting a frankly distracting blond hair do. But if it is possible to look beyond those alarming locks, Silva is also a useful example of the importance of good character design in writing.

Delightfully foreign, flamboyant, and openly gay he is in many respects the exact opposite of stoically British, aggressively heterosexual lead. Yet he is of course also very similar to Bond. They have both worked for MI6, both operating in the shadows at the edges of morality and legality. In M, they share a "parent", one who has loved and mistreated them both. Much like Belloq to Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Silva is the dark inversion of James Bond and it is in the similarities as much as the differences between the characters that the film's most potent conflicts lie.

What I would have liked however is for Silva to have pushed his humiliation of M -- and by extension MI6 -- further. Obviously in many ways, his plot makes no sense, but to dwell on that is the preserve of pedants and saddos (so, you know, I've relegated it to the footnotes¹). But if we accept that his plan does make sense really and that his technological wizardry is such that he could kill M whenever he wants², then he must desire more than simply her death.

His true revenge is to see her brought low, for everything she has fought for to be questioned, her entire career's conduct doubted...and only then to destroy her. But the film short-cuts M's fall and never really explores the effects Silva's game has on her. Indeed, the villain's own actions cut her descent off, with his escape and failed assassination attempt interrupting a potentially pivotal appearance in front of the government committee.

For my money this robbed the finale and M's death of the much of the emotional heft it was reaching for.

Dial M for Mummy. And possibly Mortality too.

Making her seventh and final appearance as the Bond boss, it is perhaps fitting that Judi Dench's M gets more to work with this time than in her rather more limited "dole out exposition and look pissed off" roles of previous outings. Indeed, arguably she is the emotional and thematic heart of the film.

Ironically enough for a series with an essentially immortal hero, old age and death are among the prime concerns of Skyfall. Throughout the film M faces extinction. Firstly it is just her career, but in the final act she faces a rather more permanent sort. Intertwined with her struggles are those of Bond. Left for dead at the beginning of the film, he makes a recovery unprecedented since biblical days and eventually returns to MI6's bosom. But his rebirth is an unsuccessful one. He fails his tests and is only cleared for service by M's executive decision, a reflection of her own personal rage against the dying of the light. This folly has disastrous consequences for M and the rest of the security service -- by the end of the second act she and her favourite son are in flight with MI6 in disarray and Silva in the ascendency.

So following the classic three-act structure the final act has to pull our heroes back from the abyss. Thematically the ending is clever. Bond's earlier resurrection was a false one. Only in returning to the place of his birth can he be truly reborn³; a phoenix rising from the flames of his childhood home. An orphan already, he is orphaned once more following the death of M, his new mother dying in the place where his real parents are buried. Thus reborn, with his enemy vanquished, he is ready to rejoin MI6 as an accomplished operative, ready to serve Queen and Country once again.

Structurally then, the film ends on a strong note. In other ways though this third act disappointed.

The Torch. Seriously. The torch. Come on.

You're on the run through a dark Scottish wilderness. The bad guys are only yards away. You're hurt so you can't run fast, but you've got someone with you. Someone who knows the terrain. Someone who has just proved himself a mental Scottish badass with a shorn-off shotgun and shit. He won't let you down.

SO WHY USE THE BLOODY TORCH.

Go on, give it a good wave around. Don't bother concentrating on the ground, or pointing it away from Silva and his gun-wielding gang. No. Flail it all over the place. Make sure he can't miss it.

I realise that for the ending in the chapel Silva had to know where they had gone. But this attack of the stupids really annoyed me⁴. In fact, it was so obvious, so out of character, I just assumed it was a bait and switch, with maybe the old man valiantly making himself obvious to lead the bad guys away from M. But no. The head of the British Secret Service is really that stupid.

No wonder she lost the disc.

References

1. Why it was necessary for him to allow himself to be captured? Was it the only way he could get into the country? Surely a man of his means could get around the UK Border Police. His capture only seems to make life more difficult for himself. And isn't the whole "villain lets himself be captured" thing becoming a bit of a movie cliché these days anyway?
2. The movie trope of the computer as a magic box that can do anything (somehow cause explosion in M's office? What did he do, overclock her computer's CPU?) makes an irritating reappearance. I thought in these more technologically savvy days we were past such silliness.
3. The rumours have it that Sean Connery was asked to play the role taken by Albert Finney. I can understand to a certain extent -- Bond returning to the well and all that -- but I wonder how audiences would have reacted.
4. But then the entire act felt a little bit derivative, its action sterile and unoriginal. A shame really that its scene work didn't really match its structural and thematic strengths.

Exploring "Atonement" Part 3

Over the next week or so I'm posting edited extracts from an extended analysis I did a few years ago of Christopher Hampton's script ATONEMENT. 

Here is the third part, again concentrating on theme... (spoilers, naturally, abound)

The Mighty Lie

Fiction can hurt. Fiction can heal. Briony ruins Robbie and Cecilia's happiness with a fiction; she hopes to give it back through the same medium. Atonement is a meditation on the powers of a lie. Its very first scene hints at what is to come: ¹

CREDIT SEQUENCE

The SOUND of a typewriter, irregularly struck, now fluent, now creating an urgent rhythm that forms the percussive element of the opening score.

A doll’s house, in the form of the Tallis house, an enormous Victorian Gothic pile. The CAMERA moves from room to room, from the nursery and spare bedrooms on the second floor, to the main bedrooms on the first floor, where puppet versions of mother, daughter, son and baby sister are neatly ordered, to the ground floor with its library, drawing room, dining room and kitchen.

Finally the CAMERA moves to the hall through which a young gardener puppet wheels a wheelbarrow.

From the very first line of the script we are reminded that this is a fiction, something created, something written. The puppets - all major characters we are about to meet - belong to Briony. We are being told that she is in charge of what we are about to see, while the worrying reduction of life to a child's game hints at the disastrous events about to unfold.

Briony’s tales form the backbone of the scenes at the Tallis household. In the grotto², she writes of a princess, the black-hearted ‘Sir Romulus Turnball’ (Robbie Turner) and ‘the one with red hair’(Lola).³ Sadly for the other characters this is not the last time Briony melds fact with fiction. These early experiments pave the way to the false accusation of rape that so ruins Robbie and Cecilia's life. The power of fiction sweeps all before it with devastating effect.

When the script leaves the Tallis estate, Briony and her fiction may be triumphant but they are both villains. The rest of the script seeks the rehabilitation of them both.

Stories of different kinds fill the second act. The sequence in Northern France is punctuated by flashbacks to Briony’s childhood “fall” into the river (itself of course a fiction) as well as more recent meetings between Robbie and Cecilia in London. These form a sort of narrative - they are, as Robbie states, ‘our story’⁴. His accidental encounter with a cinema showing melancholy romance Quai des Brumes provides a subtle underscoring to this.⁵

Meanwhile, Briony's time as a nurse in London sees the eighteen-year old watch propaganda films in the hospital day room and spend her nights writing.⁶ But it is in her nursing of a dying French soldier that we see the first real rehabilitation of fiction. In this moving scene, Briony plays along with the man’s heart-breaking delusions, pretending to be his sweetheart to ease his final moments. The lie is an act of kindness.⁷ It is a milestone on fiction's journey from the malicious acts of Briony’s childhood towards the ultimate rewriting of history that sees the Older Briony give Robbie and Cecilia their happy ending.


References

1. Hampton, Atonement, p. 1
2. The location of this scene is significant, given that it is in the grotto that Briony will witness Lola’s “rape” and concoct the fiction of Robbie’s guilt.
3.  Hampton, Atonement, p. 22
4. Hampton, Atonement, p. 54
5. Hampton, Atonement, p. 59
6. Hampton, Atonement, p. 67-9 and p. 78
7. Hampton, Atonement, p. 73-8

Exploring "Atonement" Part 2

Over the next week or so I'm posting edited extracts from an extended analysis I did a few years ago of Christopher Hampton's script ATONEMENT. 

Here is the second part, the first of several on theme... (spoilers, naturally, abound)

Last time I explored Atonement's somewhat unusual structural approach. Now let's begin looking at its themes.

This is no tale of love conquering all or good triumphing over evil - there is instead a deliberate ambiguity in the themes of Atonement. It seeks to explore the shades of grey in life. The dilemmas. The contradictions.

The Impossibility of Atonement

The story represents both an attempt at atonement and a simultaneous critique of the very possibility of such an act.

As discussed previously, a modern cinema audience consciously or otherwise is accustomed to seeing transgressions punished and wrongs rectified. Atonement explores the limits of that view.

For as we discover by the story's end, Briony's many acts of atonement, her service during the war, her ‘life of austere dedication’¹, do not – and crucially could never – change the essential fact that Robbie and Cecilia died with their happiness unfulfilled. The scene on the beach that ends the film, a jarring juxtaposition of the generic happy ending with the truth about the couple's demise, forces the audience to confront the uncomfortable truth that we cannot change the past and that there are some acts for which we cannot atone. Such a theme is perhaps unusual in a medium which often emphasises the individual’s power over events. Instead, here we have a narrator, the god of her story, reduced to an unsettling impotence.

This essential impossibility of atonement is reinforced by the recurrent motif of water throughout the script.

Water of course has traditionally positive associations with cleansing, both the literal removal of dirt and the metaphysical removal of sin. In this script, however, its connotations are far darker, as Cecilia warns her young cousins:

JACKSON

Can we go for a swim please, Cecilia?

CECILIA

I don’t see why not, as long as you don’t go near the deep end.

In Atonement water is dangerous. It is the element most associated with the lovers and their deaths - Robbie dies in the miserable damp by the sea at Dunkirk, Cecilia drowns in a flooded Tube station.³ 

Early scenes foreshadow these fates. The encounter between Robbie and Cecilia that Briony so misinterprets takes place by a fountain and sees Cecilia immersed in its water. Later in this first act, she dives into water once more, this time to escape her brother’s teasing about Robbie. And in the very next scene Robbie emerges from his bath and spots a passing RAF plane through a high window, a subtle foreshadowing of the military doom awaiting him.²

By the script's end, water is transformed from a means of cleansing into a harbinger of death. It is tainted, its powers destroyed and the impossibility of absolution for Briony reinforced. The final image of the script is of Robbie and Cecilia walking together on a beach as the waves rage behind them.⁴ But this is no happy ending. The depiction of water throughout and the audience's knowledge about the couple's deaths only reveal the bitter hollowness of this Briony-fabricated scene.

More next time...

References

1. Christopher Hampton, from an interview posted on September 17 2007, http://www.cinematical.com/
2007/09/17/tiff-interview-christopher-hampton-screenwriter-of-atonement/
2. Hampton, Atonement, p. 8-13; p. 18
3. Hampton, Atonement, p. 90-1
4. Hampton, Atonement, p. 92

Exploring "Atonement"

Over the next week or so I'm posting edited extracts from an extended analysis I did a few years ago of Christopher Hampton's script ATONEMENT. Here is the first part... (spoilers, naturally, abound)

Atonement, based on Ian McEwan's novel of the same name, was released in 2007. It tells the story of the precocious but naive Briony Tallis whose disastrous lie ruins the lives of sister Cecilia and her lover Robbie. The adaptation was written by acclaimed playwright Christopher Hampton.


Atonement is not a simple script. It deals with “art house” themes in an unusual structure. Given its provenance, this is perhaps not surprising. Yet it was destined for mainstream release, with all the advantages and constraints that brings. The tension inherent in these facts is never quite resolved but does all the same open up interesting avenues for analysis and discussion. I'll be discussing some of these in this series of posts.

Let us begin with that unusual structure.

Atonment and the Three-Act Structure

Briony's novel, the narrative with which the audience is engaged for much of the script but of which we remain ignorant until its revelation, can be recreated broadly in a traditional three-act model – of transgression, recognition and subsequent redemption – with Briony as its protagonist. The inciting incident, as suggested by the working title of Briony's novel, Two Figures by a Fountain¹, comes when the younger Tallis watches, and entirely misinterprets, the encounter between Robbie and Cecilia when the vase is broken.² This leads to the transgression, whereby Briony, through further such misinterpretations and false assumptions, ensures the lovers are separated. This ends act one.

Robbie’s suffering, firstly in gaol and then in the chaos of Dunkirk begins the second act. This is an exploration of the consequences of Briony’s error and represents an additional layer of conflict – quite literally – in the form of the Second World War. Meanwhile, the eighteen year old Briony has volunteered as a nurse in an attempt to soothe her conscience (‘[...] the whole motivation of that nursing section [is that] I think she throws herself into this job out of guilt.’³). The subsequent recognition of her mistakes leads to redemption gained through ensuring Robbie and Cecilia's happy ending together.

However, while the story can be divided along Aristotelian principles, Atonement’s plotting and presentation diverges from this model in several key aspects.

Firstly, some of the above story points are omitted from the script. For instance, the progress towards Briony's recognition of her mistake and the moment itself are not featured. When the script rejoins Briony she has already reached this point, as she admits to Cecilia.⁴ Similarly omitted are the actions whereby she secures Robbie and Cecilia's future and her own redemption (although these are hinted at by Robbie in his instructions to her⁵).

Secondly, there are the temporal ellipses, location shifts and clashes of mode. The pace, atmosphere and naturalism of the sultry heat of Summer 1935 is juxtaposed with the ‘mist-shrouded’⁶, nightmarish Northern France of 1940. This is accompanied by the abrupt change in mode to expressionism and in focus to Robbie. The subsequent shift back to London and Briony is similarly sudden. These wrenching changes unbalance the reader and call audience attention to the structure of the script. By doing so, Atonement highlights the true nature of structure in its general sense, one usually hidden in mainstream film: a tool of narration. The structure of Atonement acts as a narrator, it ‘modulates our interest and gives significance and meaning to events’⁷, even before the hidden, literal narrator is revealed.

That revelation is the third divergence and represents the most important element of plotting in the piece, with an impact upon any interpretation of Atonement or reaction to it which far outweighs its five pages. Here the reader learns the truth about the narrative that has until now formed the script: ⁸

INTERVIEWER

I’d like to talk now about your new novel, Atonement, which is coming out in a few days to coincide with your birthday. It’s your twenty-first novel...

This radically alters the reader's relationship with the script. Writing about theatre, the Shakespeare scholar Bernard Beckerman states, ‘the idiosyncratic activity of a play is that peculiar window through which we look at some aspect of life. At times we are so engrossed by what we see that we are not aware of the window’.⁹ It is this moment in Atonement when the “window” is exposed to audience view and the inherent artificiality of the preceding eighty-six pages displayed.

This undermines many of the assumptions that lie behind the restorative three-act structure.

In Atonement, Briony's transgression may be punished by a lifetime of guilt but the expected balance of Robbie and Cecilia's happiness goes unfulfilled. These characters do not have the chance to choose their happy ending, nor, despite her attempts, does Briony for them, as both Robbie and Cecilia are killed by outside forces.¹⁰ Finally, the audience is not left outside, looking in, but forced to actively confront their own position relative to the narrative.

Atonement's unusual structure does not simply act as a hidden skeleton on which the meat of our story hangs. It is a Pompidou Centre of a script - its trusses are on display, its joints actively highlighted. The jolting, even confusing result shakes the audience from any lazy mode of film consumption and instead forces active engagement with the script's themes.

Which is what I will discuss next time.




References

1.Christopher Hampton, Atonement (Newmarket Press, 2008), p. 68
2. Hampton, Atonement, p. 8-13
3. Christopher Hampton, from an interview with cinematical.com, 17th September 2007.
4. Hampton, Atonement, p.70
5. Hampton, Atonement, p. 86
6. Hampton, Atonement, p.52
7. Dancyger and Rush, Alternative Scriptwriting, 2nd edn, p.38
8. Hampton, Atonement, p.89-90
9. Bernard Beckerman, Dynamics of Drama (Drama Book Specialists, 1979), p. 32
10. Robbie by septicaemia and Cecilia by a German bomb.

On Fingers and Film-writing

I have always been a firm believer that it is the fingers that tell the mind to work rather than the other way around. The physical act of writing -- writing just about anything -- gets the creative juices flowing.

So that's my justification for this latest piece of procrastination. It's going to help my work, see?

I'll be writing about my nascent career in screenwriting (both the craft and business sides), about the films I see, the books I read. Hopefully it will be entertaining.

And if not, well at least it gets my fingers moving.

Is this thing on?

That's right I've started a blog.

About ten years after it was the hip thing to do.

Bring out the bunting.