SLIDE 1 - The topic of my presentation is – Ian McEwan’s Atonement, most precisely

its film adaptation directed by Joe Wright. What motivated me throughout the analysis was the

narratological solutions of the film – Atonement is a rather complex novel with a carefully

written, pretty smart narrative.

SLIDE 2: CONTENT/STRUCTURE:

SLIDE 3 PLOT: Briony Tallis, aged thirteen, has always been a writer: this is the first

we learn when starting the novel: she is working on a play – Trials of Arabella – to celebrate

his brother, Leon coming home. Briony is quite a fanciful child – an adjective used to describe

her by her sister Cecilia – and the narration as such reflects on her personality with the long

sentences, the rarely used adjectives, the “big words”, the highly sophisticated sentences. The

style of the narration, however, changes with the perspectives: I want to show that the film does

the same – because it does – with cinematic solutions.

Briony Tallis sees something she does not understand at that age – as I have mentioned,

thirteen years of age – which is a sexual intercourse between her sister and her (boy)friend,

Robbie. What makes this situation more complex and awkward is the fact that Briony (she is a

nosy child, who wants to see and know about everything) has read a letter written by Robbie to

Cecilia. It is mentioned as “the obscene draft” in the novel: Robbie accidentally put the wrong,

pretty obscene letter in the envelope instead the one in which he confesses his feelings. Briony

has read it and does not know how to deal with what she has read. During these days the Tallis

family is visited by relatives: Briony’s cousins are there as their parents are getting a divorce.

Beside the fifteen-year-old Lola and her younger brothers, there is another visitor: Paul

Marshall (played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the film), an older, rich businessman who owns

an amo-factory. The night when Briony interrupts Cecilia and Robbie, the twins run away, so

everyone starts to search for them. That night, Paul Marshall rapes Lola. Briony, however,

accuses Robbie Turner, claiming that she “saw him with [her] own eyes”, and tells everyone,
including the police, that it was Robbie who raped Lola. Due to this lie, Robbie is put into jail

and then sent to the war. to Dunkirk. (the novel takes place before, then during and later on after

the second world war).

The second part of the novel mostly adopts Robbie’s point of view – his experiences

in in Dunkirk. In this part of the novel, the narration changes: short sentencesdominate, the text

is becoming more and more fragmented. The linearity is broken not because of the changes of

POV, as in the first part, but because of the flashbacks (or sometimes hallucinations) to the

times he was in England, before the war.

The third part is again mostly about (now the eighteen-year-old) Briony, who has

decided to work as a nurse in a hospital during the war. This part is again different from the

previous ones: Briony has grown up, she has realised she made a mistake, and we are getting

insights into her writing – because she is still writing. After the soldiers come back to London

from Dunkirk, she visits her sister Cecilia, and she meets Robbie. She tells them she wants to

change her confession, however, she is a bit late: Paul Marshall and Lola Quincy have just got

married.

SLIDE 4: The last part of the novel, however, changes everything: The third part is

finished with this: London, 1999, and the in the film we – all of a sudden – see this shot with

an elderly woman, presumably Briony Tallis.

SLIDE 5: This part makes the whole novel metafictional – Briony Tallis is the author

of Atonement which is, apparently, an autobiographical novel. She claims to have vascular

dementia, which adds to the trickiness of the novel and questions the accuracy or legitimacy of

the text to an even greater extent. It is not written in third person like the three parts before, but

in the first-person: there is a very definite “I”.

SLIDE 6: All of this makes the reader revise and rethink the first three parts of the

narrative as there are certain questions that may arise: To what extent can we believe Briony?
What is fictional and what is reality (of course in the world of the novel). When (re)watching

the film, its metafictionality, self-reflexivity, and the idea of the process of writing/being made

should be taken into consideration.

SLIDE 7: Before I embark upon the analysis, I would like to make a distinction between

the notion of the IMPLIED AUTHOR and that of the NARRATOR using Gregory Currie’s

essay. The notion of the implied author was created by Wayne Booth in his work The Rhetoric

of Fiction, but besides him, others have created their own definition for this term. I also used

Huw Marsh’s essay on Atonement in which he analysed this very issue.

SLIDE 8-9: Currie claims that the implied author is a figure “fictional or imagined,

because her mental economy does not necessarily correspond to that of the actual author, but

who is not to be thought of as occupying a position within the work itself. Rather she is

conceptualized as the agent responsible for the story qua fiction”, furthermore, it is dominant

over the narrator as it determines what is true in the story. Whereas the narrator is “a creature

who is conceptualized as a product of the work itself rather than as the work’s producer”. Currie

also distinguishes between internal (intradiegetic) and external (extradiegetic) narrator, the

former being a character within the story itself, and the latter meaning someone who announces

oneself as telling the story as fiction. It is crucial to identify that the narrator is there to tell and

not to determine what is true in the story.

SLIDE 10: On the basis of these notions, Currie defined Narrative Unreliability:

“disparity between the (determining) intentions of the implied author concerning what is true

in the story and the (reporting) intentions of the narrator concerning what she would have

reader believe occurred”. In the case of Atonement something similar happens, but what makes

it even more complex is its metafictionality.

 SLIDE 11: At the end of the film/novel, Briony Tallis claims that she has “for a very

long time decided to tell the absolute truth. No rhymes, no embellishments”. Up to this point of

the narrative, however, no one would have questioned its accuracy – however, ironically, it is

precisely this point which questions this “absolute truth” .

SLIDE 12: We know that the novel works with a third-person, omniscient narrator in

the first three parts, and the idea of predestination with foreshadowing elements is also peculiar

(mostly) to the first part as the narrator has often referred to Briony’s crime as “her crime” even

before she has committed it. And we also know that this narrator shows us different

perspectives.

SLIDE 13: But let us see what happens in the film.

SLIDE 14: Emily R. Andersen writes that ““A film’s narrator is a combination of mise

en scéne, cinematography, editing, and sound. Other accounts are limited either to one of

these – usually cinematography – or to acts literal narration – such as voiceover or the reading

aloud of letters”. I intend to analyse the film on the basis of this definition.

SLIDE 15: One of the film’s most dominant features is sound – most precisely, the

sound of the typewriter and other intradiegetic sounds, and of course soundtrack as such.

SLDIE 16: When starting to watch Atonement, we hear before we see. As James

Dalrymple pointed out in his analysis on Atonement first we hear the sound of a typewriter, then

we see the title appearing on the screen. The first shot shows a dollhouse? a dollhouse (which

after rewatching the film can be understood as a foreshadowing element), then the camera

slowly pans to Briony whom we see sitting in a chair and writing her play, Trials of Arabella.

This is not the only occasion we hear this sound: it appears throughout the whole film,

sometimes falling to the rhythm of the music or other sounds.

 SLIDE 17: Dalrymple calls it a percussive element which does not just accentuate but

“accelerate the action”. In his study he also calls attention to the importance of synchronicity

which is often represented with the help of sounds. He connects it to the idea of cause and

effect, furthermore, he links this to the idea of predestination. Even though we have always

known that Briony is the only writer in the story, and we have always known that we hear her

typing, the end of the film changes this too: we do not, or do not only hear the character Briony

writing, but also the “Author Briony” – this way this sound creates the effect of the process of

being made. We literally hear the story being written while we are watching it.

SLIDE 18: We know that the film is likely to use sounds, but let us see how the narrator

appears through other cinematic solutions as there is no clear narrator who would tell us the

story, Dalrymple considers Briony as the hidden narrator of the novel, and this is partly true in

the case the film as well – her perspectives are more dominant and more frequent, but she cannot

be called the narrator – or at least not in this part of the film. Sometimes voiceover is used, for

instance, in the scene when Briony is sitting outside the house and writing her story. First, we

hear her thoughts then we see her writing: these thoughts, however, are hard to understand as

they are not clear, they are merged together, they become indistinct and obscure.

SLIDE 19-20: The scene changes, the thoughts continue: now we see Robbie writing

his letter and for a couple of seconds, we still hear Briony’s thoughts – one of them is clear

enough to understand: “an evil man” is heard while we see Robbie. The next sequence of shots

shows Robbie writing his letter in which he wants to confess his feelings to Cecilia, we also see

Cecilia getting ready, Robby writing what is referred to in the novel as the “obscene draft”

which is a way more erotic and adult letter, and we see him putting the latter accidentally in the

envelope instead of the decent letter.This sequence uses fast cutting, it hard to follow, as the

shots are becoming fragmented. Close-ups and reflections are shown. The music Robbie starts

to listen to rules this episode enhancing the effect that is already created. What is also visible
here is the use of the light, for instance, the light coming from the window as it adds a “dreamy”

effect. Cecilia is shown from the back and through a reflection in the mirror: she does not appear

here as a dominant/active character, but instead as an illusion, an idealized image. The mirror

image also illustrates how Cecilia, or their relationship as such, is unavailable for them for

whom?. These scenes are in contrast to the child’s point of view – creating the idea of erotic

fantasies of the adult world, something the children Briony only can describe as the “evil man”.

SLIDE 21: There is a scene which appear twice in the film: Robbie and Cecilia by the

fountain. First, we see this from the POV of Briony: she is watching them from the window.

Briony is shown in a close up, there is a clear focus on her face – she is clearly in the center of

the shot, she rules this scene – then we see Robbie and Cecilia: they are shown from above,

from a distance, form the window. As it can be seen in this picture (DIA 23), the shot is

disturbed (maybe it is the face of Briony, hard to know), the colours are faded and, Cecilia and

Robbie seem to be arguing – seemingly in a violent way, Robbie seems to be threatening in this

shot. The next shot shows Briony closing the window – but crucial to realize that we see her

reflection.

SLIDE 24-2722: Next, we see the whole scene again – but now the camera follows

Cecilia from the house to the fountain and it is there to help the viewers understand what

happens. In this case, as the camera work suggests, – they, or rather, she gain(s) agency. The

colors, similarly to the previous scene with Briony, are vivid and definite. We see exactly the

same scene that was shown from Briony’s point of view, but now the viewers understand that

it was not a violent scene, Robbie just warned Cecilia that if she takes another step, she -as she

was barefoot- will step into the broken pieces of the vase, and the fact that they are developing

feelings for each other. This part concludes with the shot of Briony closing the window – which

now appears as a frame for Cecilia’s perspective. Having a frame creates the illusion that the

last sequence is being embedded in the primary level of narration of which the narrator is,
Briony. The same pattern appears a bit later, when Briony interrupts Robbie and Cecilia in the

library room of the house – Briony believes this sexual scene to be a violent act, but later on we

learn that in fact, they are in love with each other.

SLIDE 24: As it has been mentioned before, both the film and the novel involve

foreshadowing elements (the novel is more clear about it). At the end of the film, Briony Tallis

confesses that in “reality” (of her world) Robbie died in Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed by the

bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station – she drowns in the flooded underground

space. The airplane Robbie sees while being in the bathtub, or when Cecilia jumps into the

fountain for the broken piece of vase foreshadow this ending – which, however, was not how

Briony’s atonement ended, but how it happened in her “reality”.

SLIDE 25: The idea of inevitable fate is also presented with this scene which is

recursive.

26: The second part entirely focuses on the events of the second world war – hence the

perspective of Robbie who is sent to France. This part has no linearity, it is rather an

incongruous part broken by flashbacks and hallucinations (for example about his mother).

Contrary to the previous part which was dominated by vivid colours, mostly green, light-blue

and white; here there is a lack of lights and colours.

SLIDE 32: Although we see Robbie’s point of view, he becomes a distant figure – he

is often hard to find in the shots, has become unreachable and unrecognizable, and this, it can

be argued, signifies the loss of individuality and personality. After we learn that this past was

written by Briony and thus, in this way, the legitimacy and reality of this part can be questioned,

the lack of lights and colours can also be connected to this aspect: it can depict the lack of real,

first-hand experiences/information, and the “fictionality” of this part. Ez jó Of course, in the

actual world Robbie was in the war, and the i

 WW2 did happen, however, this is why the war-aspect is more significant than that of

Robbie’s – this is what the 5 minute long uncut scene signifies as well.

SLIDE 29:. The third part takes place during the war, but in London, focusing again on

Briony Tallis, now as an 18-year-old nurse. Everything is the exact opposite of the war scenes

– white, tidy, symmetrical. As Dalrymple points out, Briony’s “love of order and ‘symmety’

derives from and informs her early literary efforts”. These scenes also reflect this love of order

and symmetry that has been part of the scenes in which she appears since the beginning. In this

orderly world Briony is there to atone, to make amends for her crime. This is the point in the

narrative where she has already realized that she had made a terrible mistake and where she is

already writing her novel, Atonement. We may even realize that what she is writing (“Two

Figures by a Fountain”) is indeed a scene from Atonement.

SLIDE 30: . Besides the different points of view, the film also portrays and uses the

metalevel, the counterpart of the fourth part in the novel. London, 1999 – this is the part when

it becomes clear from the diary entry/interview that Briony is the “author”. Let us return to

Currie’s definition of the implied author: a figure, fictional or imagined (…) not to be thought

of as occupying a position within the work itself. Rather she is conceptualized as the agent

responsible for the story”. He also claims that the implied author determines what is true in the

story, while the narrator only tells it. Who is Briony? Is she an implied author? Or is she the

narrator of the story? If so, is she internal or external in the terms set by these definitions? She

is indeed a character in the story itself, hence, she mostly appears as the (internal) narrator,

however, there must be someone (even if it is not Briony) who tells the story to us as fiction.

What makes this hard to decide, and what causes a collapse when it comes to deciding the

legitimacy of the narrator, is the fact that Atonement is a metafiction: hence the novel is not

only self-reflexive concerning itself, but it also challenges and reflect to our way of reading

novel. Briony Tallis, the author, invented a new ending for Cecilia and Robbie, she determined
the truth of her now narrative. However, when it comes to the metalevel, she is only the

(internal) narrator, a character who wrote a novel about her life in which she has changed the

ending. The unreliability appears as these two levels collapse into each other.

SLIDE 31: When analysing the unreliability of Atonement, Marsh quoteed Bruno

Zerweck, who claims that in contemporary fiction “subjectivity and unreliability are accepted

as realities, and reliability is regarded as impossibility”. I assume, however, that readers/viewers

are still lookingfor a legitimate, factual world when reading a book or watching a movie. This

is what Atonement makes us realize when we are faced with the fact that Briony Tallis is not

just a character, but something more in the story.

SLIDE 32: As Marsh points out, the last section makes the extradiegetic narration (of

the first three parts) become homodiegetic, and (this is what is crucial about it) only

retrospectively so. He also refers to Briony as an undeclared intradiegetic narrator (when it

come to the three first parts) who I argue, at the same time, appears as the implied author (but

only in the last part). However, he rather calls Briony an embodied author-narrator. It seems

hard to define Briony’s role in this, it is not obvious how we should treat her. But the

metafictional ending and the question about narrators make Atonement a novel/film which

demands a revised rereading/rewatching,