The last week, we watching most of the Ian McEwan's Atonement. I think it was an exciting and fun movie, because the author combines love with misunderstandings and tension, all surrounded by the Second World War. The errors of Briony will obliterate the relationship between Cecilia and Robbie, and will put difficult barriers in their love. Eventually, Robbie will go to war and he will die in the Dunkirk Evacuation. Meanwhile, Cecilia will try to avoid the horrors of war, but she will also die because of air raids. Later, Briony will realize all what she had caused and will write a book narrating all her infancy and how she screwed up Cecilia's life. In the same book, she will put a happy ending, just as it should've been.
After that brief summary of the plot, I want to answer some questions to round up my ideas related to the movie.
1. What sort of social and cultural setting does the Tallis
House create? What emotions and impulses are being acted upon or repressed by
its inhabitants?
The house creates and old-high class atmosphere. This makes a contrast between the family and their servants, which we can appreciate between Cecilia and Robbie. The action itself expresses confusion and chaos. The family is going through weird problems that disturb not just the adults, but the little Briony.
2. A passion for order, a lively imagination, and a desire
for attention seem to be Briony's strongest traits. In what ways is she still a
child? Is her narcissism - her inability to see things from any point of view
but her own - unusual in a thirteen-year-old?
I think she is still a child because she acts by impulses. Although she seems to think before she does something, she is only building a fiction story in her mind and she doesn't really think twice before acting. She seems to be convinced by her own created "movie" and won't look what happened in other perspectives.
3. Why does Briony stick to her "version of the
story" with such unwavering commitment? Does she act entirely in error in
a situation she is not old enough to understand, or does she act, in part, on
an impulse of malice, revenge, or self-importance?
Briony's behavior is influenced by many factors. She may feel uncomfortable with the relationship between Robbie and her sister, maybe because the girl is in love with Robbie. Also, she is still growing and she misunderstands what she sees, and she managed to create an unreal story about Robbie and Cecilia.
4. As she grows older, Briony develops the empathy to
realise what she has done to Cecilia and Robbie. How and why do you think she
does this?
As the girl grows older, she feels how guilt grows stronger inside her. She starts to open her mind and realizes that she had blocked the opportunity to love to her sister. She starts to feel culpable for the disasters her sister lived and wants to do something to solve the problem. In this mood, she wrote a book about the family's problems, but she changed the end of the story to a happy one.
While I watch Atonement, I get to know that Robbie, Cecilia's lover, died to Leukemia in the Dunkirk Evacuation. As we study literature we always have the chance to learn about world's history, and this is one of those!
