‘Atonement’ (Viewed Stratford-upon-Avon, 19.08.07)
Aug 20th, 2007 by abi
Yesterday I was lucky enough to see a preview of the film ‘Atonement’ based (very closely as it turns out) on the truly masterful novel by Ian McEwan.
I applaud the way it stayed true to the spirit, mood and overall point of the book and it coped well enough with the periodic nature of the story. I think at first I was so overwhelmed with relief at this that it took a while for some of the film’s faults to filter through to me. Hence my initial reaction was ‘wow!’ but my reaction after a few hours had dampened to ‘good film, worth seeing’.
I thought it was well acted throughout and I was greatly impressed with Romola Garai who is one of my favourite actresses. It was also beautifully made, especially the war scenes. I have a couple of minor quibbles though. That damned typewriter motif is annoying and clunkingly deliberate. I’m intrigued to see whether others hate it as much as I did! Also, the nods to method acting were unfortunately a little silly and melodramatic (and put me in mind of some scenes from The History Boys).
There was a live interview afterwards with director Joe Wright. I have mixed reactions to his work in general. He seems extremely gifted in terms of getting the best out of actors and in terms of understanding and empathising with characters. He always manages to make them sympathetic -I was impressed with his ability in Pride and Prejudice to make even Lydia, Mary and Mrs. Bennett understandable characters. This was also clear from the interview he gave in which he made some extremely insightful comments about the characters in ‘Atonement’.
However (you sensed that word was coming, right?), I just think he tries too hard sometimes and can end up being too deliberate and gimmicky as with the whole typewriter thing in this film and as with many things in ‘Pride and Prejudice’.
These are all minor gripes though. I was greatly impressed by this film overall and I give it a definite thumbs up. I just think it would have to be a four or a four and a half out of five and not a five. I really, really hope it does well, I will certainly go and see it again and will definitely be buying it on DVD as something I will want to watch more times throughout my life.
Having rounded that off as a general review I ought to add that there was an interesting discussion in the talk afterwards about happy and sad endings. There was a suggestion (much to Andrew’s delight) that there’s a certain snobby prejudice against happy endings. This may be true but in my experience there tends to be a healthy and necessary prejudice against being fobbed off with sentimental nonsense. There are, however, many great (and greatly respected) films that have happy endings and no-one is ‘snobby’ about those. So I’m not sure I entirely ‘got’ that.
What really interested me was that Wright clearly considered both the book and film of ‘Atonement’ to contain a strong element of hope and goodness. I hadn’t really looked at it that way before but I guess he’s right. Although things are messy and tragic with bad people getting away with it and good people suffering there is a sense that the main characters are all ‘good’ and in some ways redeemed, with spoilt Cecilia deserting her privileged background to become a wartime nurse and Briony’s lifelong pursuit of ‘Atonement’.
There’s also the idea, and I did pick this up from the book, that it’s not always a bad thing to have an over-active imagination and to substitute your own reality for the one you see before you. This was cause of great injustice and tragedy but also of redemption and hope. It’s an interesting thought and one to ponder as you watch the film.
“There are, however, many great (and greatly respected) films that have happy endings and no-one is ‘snobby’ about those.”
Such as? I’ll be happy when the same critics who sneer at happy endings do the same for cynical everybody-dies endings. These, however, are usually ‘deep and profound’.
Hmmm… I think you generally have a different experience of critics than I do. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, I’m just saying it’s not something I’ve ever experienced through my own feelings or others and that’s why I didn’t really understand what they were getting at.
To be honest almost everything ever made has an element of happy and sad because that’s life and that’s storytelling. It’s like in the article about the West Wing that you e-mailed me when they changed the winner of the election to Santos because Leo had to die. They realised they needed that balance between the sadness and happiness.
I think that pulling off something totally unhappy and pessimistic or totally happy and optimistic is very, very difficult and that’s probably why fewer of these turn into great successes. It doesn’t mean they can’t though. I think if a film with a happy ending is well done people appreciate it. It can just be so difficult to get right.
Here are just a few films I can think of right now that have happy endings/portray the human spirit in a positive light and are well regarded:
Some Like it Hot
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
The Shawshank Redemption
The Lord of the Rings
Persuasion
Much Ado About Nothing
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The Truman Show
The Graduate (one of my all-time favourites and a top notch feelgood movie)
Good Night and Good Luck
I’m sure there are loads more.
Out of interest -would you rank ‘Atonement’ as a happy film, a sad film, or somewhere inbetween and would you say that it presented human beings in a positive or negative light? I’m just intrigued…
I’m sure I could find plenty of critics who’ve described the endings of those films as cloying/sentimental/cliche etc.. It’s what they do for a living
I’m surprised you haven’t come across the massive prejudice against happy endings, though. Any time there’s a sad ending it’s lauded as being brave, against the Hollywood mainstream, blah, etc..
If I wanted to indulge in pop-psychology, I’d suggest that desire to criticise goes hand in hand with cynicism, which is obviously going to object to happy endings. But that might be made up.
I don’t think Atonement could be summed up by any of those terms. Like you said, it was a mixture and realistic in that respect.
I found your comments really interesting. I admit my experience of it is indeed different from yours. Admittedly, though, I don’t read reviews very much. There are one or two journalists/intellectuals/cultural commentators who have earned my respect over the years and who I will listen to but only because they have generally agreed with my take on things so I treat them as a reasonable guide. Other than that I tend to get a ‘general impression’ of opinion about something mostly through talking to my parents and friends. I am far more likely to see something because a friend told me it was good than because so-and-so in the Guardian gave it a good write up. So maybe this is why I’ve never come across these reviews of which you speak.
Thinking about it their job is to write about things. All journalism is biased and about opinion and I don’t see why reviews should be exempt from that. I would prefer to read something that has opinion in it than some empty bland thing about ‘this is the plot of the film’. I expect also that they are sometimes being controversial and provoking debate and that’s part of their job too. Bear all this in mind when you read a review and you’ll learn not to take it all very seriously.
I have never, ever come across a bad review of any of those films I listed* and would disagree with it if I did. Maybe they are out there but I admit if I had read any I probably just forgot about them.
It may also be that these people who only like miserable films do so because it’s ‘fashionable’. I have met such people and believe me, they’re not worth bothering about. They’re just the art world equivalent of people who ‘must have’ the latest Gucci handbag and look down on those who haven’t got one. Nothing is exempt from pretentious fashionistas, I’m afraid, and literature and film are as susceptible as anything else.
*Except, possibly, of Andie MacDowell’s ‘wooden’ performance and I’d say that’s a fair criticism.
I think there are happy endings and happy endings. What is more cycnical than anything else is tagging on a happy ending aginst the direction of the story, simply because there’s no faith in the audience’s ability to handle anything more powerful (witness R2D2 being shot in every single Star Wars film, but always being okay by the end of the film).
In real life, there don’t tend to be happy endings, not because it’s impossible to be happy, but because there don’t tend to be such a thing as an ending; happiness now is not a guarantee of happiness in the future. Put bluntly, at some point in the future everyone is going to get sick and die. The best happy endings are not about just being happy; the happiness has been earned by gaining some understanding of the world that enables the characters to deal with grief and unhappiness. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a really good example; the happy ending is that the lovers come to accept each others’ failings and that it’s that which enables them to get back together.
Of course, sometimes you really don’t want a happy ending; a happy ending to Downfall, anyone?
I do tend to follow reviews, and I don’t think there is a general bias against happy endings (although I may just be reading the wrong reviews). When reviewers object to films with happy endings, it tends to be because the happy ending is manipulative, illogical or tackily sentimental, rather than because it’s a happy ending per se. Reviewers do also object to some unhappy endings, too, either because they’re schmaltzy and manipulative, or sadistic and cynical. I think the issue is down to the quality of the film- and occasionally the mood of the review- than any inherent bias in the critical system.
And writing a good happy ending is pretty difficult. If you’re going to write a ‘real world’ story, unambivalentally happy endings, in which every character is happy, are hard to come by. It can be done- ‘Junebug’ is a superb example- but in real life there are generally a few loose ends. As I said before, you really need to feel that the happy ending is deserved and hasn’t just been tacked on so as not to upset sensitive souls in the audeince. The magnificently upbeat twist ending to ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ works because it embodies the themes of hope, perserverance and strength that have been running through the film; it only has meaning because it links back to the characters and the stroy.
However, the ‘Hollywood Ending’ is definitely a real thing. It’s interesting to compare film versions of books, as the film version is often tweaked to produce a more unambiguously happy ending; apparently film audiences are regarded as being less able to deal with negative emotions than literary ones, for some reason. ‘The Princess Bride’ is a good example of where a book has been slightly tweaked to produce a more upbeat ending; ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a really extreme example, where having pretty faithfully followed the book the whole of the movie, the film has completely the opposite ending.