Atonement: The Movie

When the Old Crow heard what our second reading selection was, he asked if every one of our endorsements were going to have been optioned for a movie. I don’t think this is quite fair because a) I didn’t know that The Road had been optioned when I picked it, and b) I like movies, so hey c’mon. I decided to avail myself of the undeniable pleasure of sniping that a movie “was good, but not as good as the book” by going to see Atonement yesterday, and here is my report.

One of my Indie Tastemaker friends told me, a few weeks ago, that there was a shot in Atonement that was “unparalleled in the history of shots”. Now, caveat emptor – this same I.T. told me that there was a scene in I am Legend “unparalleled in emotional depth”, and when I saw I am Legend and asked, bemused, what that scene was, she could not recall it. But this time she delivered, and there was indeed a tracking shot that was simply incredible in Atonement and of which many of you have probably heard. I had heard that this unparalleled shot was a tracking shot, but that was all I knew about it, so every time the camera started to track, I got all excited and wondered if this was it. When it finally rolled around, I knew after about a minute. The scene was handled with the bravura appropriate to a five minute tracking shot (I don’t really know if it’s five minutes; IMDb has consecutive trivia items about it naming it as 4 ½ and 5 ½ minutes, so I will split the difference). After about a minute, though, I – and my moviegoing companion, who had neither read the book nor had advance warning about this shot – stopped thinking, “what an incredible illustration of the things that humans, for some reason, do to each other” and began thinking “what an amazing tracking shot”.

Now, the adjective for things like that is “virtuosic”, and the last time I dragged out “virtuosic” it was to talk about the paragraph in the novel Atonement in which Briony reacts to Robbie’s letter. The difference between the virtuosi behind them, though, was that during the book, I never stopped thinking about Briony, and in the movie, I actually spent time thinking only about Joe Wright and how goddamn expensive it must’ve been to lay down all that track. I don’t think that should be a slag on Joe Wright – the scene is beautiful, and moving – but it I think I found it moving principally as a contrapuntal example to what it portrayed (what nasty things people can do) by being an exquisite example of what people like talented filmmakers can create. In the novel, because Briony only exists in the milieu of words, a bravura performance of words can make her more real. In film, the camera cannot draw attention to itself without enforcing its status as an observer, rather than a creator. So what? I’m not really sure. I enjoyed both the film and the book (more on the end of the book later in the week), but I think that since one of the concerns I have is the reason for reading, this contrast with film might provide one element of an answer. The alloyed pleasure, of an artist’s virtuosity and of characters’ presentation of experience, may be one unique to written fiction.