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.
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
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.
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
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 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.
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