Atonement
***SPOILER ALERT!!! If you have not read the book and/or seen the movie and intend on doing so (we recommend you do) you may not want to read this post until you have.***
It’s early evening. I’ve drawn the curtains and am settling in for a quiet night. My CD player has decided to start working again so I’ve slipped in the music from the film Atonement by Dario Marianelli. I could listen to it over and over again and never tire of its dreamy notes, not even the clacking typewriter at the start. And the Elegy for Dunkirk near the end always makes me cry. If I close my eyes I can conjure up Keira Knightley’s green silk dress that would have looked so much better on me (a girl can dream). The music, the film, the book: a trio of pure pleasure.
When I read Ian McEwan’s novel that the film was based on, I was on holiday, someplace sunny with no particular aim other than to finish a chapter before going for swim in the hotel pool. Instead, I stayed rooted to my beach towel like a German tourist staking a claim as I joined the Tallis family gathering at their country house on a sweltering day in 1935. The story gently burbles along until Cecilia’s adolescent sister, Briony, reads an explicit love letter not intended for her eyes and the history of all their lives is changed from that moment on.
One thing leads to another as one lie leads to another, and the sweetest love affair between the daughter of the big house and the son from below stairs is over before it’s had time to blossom. Terrible things happen to innocent people and the memory of that happy family gathering is lost through grief and mischief and misunderstandings.
As World War II takes over the lives of everyone in the story, we catch up with Briony and Cecilia, who have both become nurses, dealing with the inevitable casualties. And Robbie, who has joined the army, desperate to catch up with his fellow soldiers in the mayhem and horror that is Dunkirk.
The music ends with Debussy’s Clair de Lune and it’s hard not to think of what could have happened had there been a different outcome to that war.
It’s early evening. I’ve drawn the curtains and am settling in for a quiet night. My CD player has decided to start working again so I’ve slipped in the music from the film Atonement by Dario Marianelli. I could listen to it over and over again and never tire of its dreamy notes, not even the clacking typewriter at the start. And the Elegy for Dunkirk near the end always makes me cry. If I close my eyes I can conjure up Keira Knightley’s green silk dress that would have looked so much better on me (a girl can dream). The music, the film, the book: a trio of pure pleasure.
One thing leads to another as one lie leads to another, and the sweetest love affair between the daughter of the big house and the son from below stairs is over before it’s had time to blossom. Terrible things happen to innocent people and the memory of that happy family gathering is lost through grief and mischief and misunderstandings.
As World War II takes over the lives of everyone in the story, we catch up with Briony and Cecilia, who have both become nurses, dealing with the inevitable casualties. And Robbie, who has joined the army, desperate to catch up with his fellow soldiers in the mayhem and horror that is Dunkirk.
The music ends with Debussy’s Clair de Lune and it’s hard not to think of what could have happened had there been a different outcome to that war.
Labels: Atonement, Ian McEwan, music
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