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 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:
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
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
I like the identification of the water theme throughout, and that beachside scene is made so much bleaker by the way it chimes with that crowded but desolate Normandy beach.
ReplyDeleteWhat's next? :-)
That's a good point! I think the power of imagery is sometimes neglected in screenplays -- almost as if it wasn't our place -- but a script like Atonement shows how effective it can be.
ReplyDeleteNext up is "Fiction and Reality".
Bet you can't wait.