Atonement “The Truth That becomes as Ghostly as Invention”

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atonement movie analysis
atonement movie analysis

Atonement Movie Analysis

Atonement movie analysis. Adapted movie analysis by analogy with its original book. Atonement characters, Ian McEwan’s Atonement.  Briony, Cecilia Tallis, and Robbie Turner. Movie adaptation Jone Wright’s Atonement.

THE TRIALS OF ARABELLA

“THE TRUTH THAT BECOMES AS GHOSTLY AS INVENTION” by Mahir Barut

Atonement movie analysis
Atonement movie analysis, THE TRIALS OF ARABELLA

I am sure that most of you watched at least once Atonement which is adapted by Joe Wright or read the novel by Ian McEwan. In this post, we will talk about impartial psychological realism and the narrative structure embedded in the plot.

The movie starts  -in tune with its original book-  with the completion of “The trials of Arabella”, Briony’s first play. In the immediate opening, this play gives us a significant hint about the beliefs and attitudes of the narrator in a form of a brief critique. In this first part, our narrator is the heterodiegetic narrator, and the point of view is the 3rd. Person and Godlike omniscient narrator however this will not permanently posture throughout both movie and novel. In the same manner, the movie also keeps the same perspective without changing the point of view.

Side Reader in Atonement

As I mentioned above, The Trials of Arabella plays a key role as it opens a gate from the Auto diegetic narrator to the heterodiegetic narrator. This happens via the voice of the narrator and meanwhile, we are becoming inadvertently secondary readers or we can call it “side reader” but it is too early for any acknowledgment of this hidden frame. But this critique, at first reading, if you have not watched the movie yet may have been misinterpreted through the first part of the novel. Our heterodiegetic narrator is presumably absent from the narration but there is an obvious interference in the psychological implications of the failure in Briony’s tentative attempt to act out her first play.

Atonement movie analysis
Atonement Character Robbie Turner

Atonement Character Analysis

In the movie, this is presented to the audience by means of the voice of the typewriter in accordance with particular moments of tension. But the scene in which Robbie typed a pathetic excuse for Cecilia, with a cunning addition what Director of the movie, Joe Wright skillfully added in, disperses the focus on Briony’s writing and helps the conjuncture of the story by springing out a surprise for the audience at the last part of the movie in a way which will be congruent with the original book. It is for this reason in the movie to comprehend this fact- the connection and the gate between the two different narrator- is really hard.

On the other hand in the novel, we are facing with deep insights which directly implies a strong emotional turmoil in a non-specific point that is reflected from a remote future with the sudden state of impulses to interfere with the internal feelings and motives of the characters by adding strong arguments upon realism which seems to be irrelevant to the simplicities of most scenes. For example, this paragraph cited from Part-1, chapter three is a perfect testimonial to the fact how a hidden auto diegetic narrator interferes in the narration of a heterodiegetic narrator.

movie adaptation Jone Wright's Atonement
Movie adaptation Jone Wright’s Atonement

Atonement Character Analysis

“ A story was direct and simple, allowing nothing come between herself and her reader – no intermediaries with their private ambitions or incompetence, no pressure of time, no limits on resources. In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world;…”

Needless to say, of course, this is not a premature confession of a regrettable mistake or a preposterous attribute because she is solely the narrator of her own world in her own book, and it is not… because she is herself also in the third part who will join to the narration and identifies herself as a narrator and writer.

Thus as a natural consequence, we are also losing our narrative voice as our storyteller voice suddenly metamorphoses into a protagonist who tells the story from the first-person point of view. Therefore these interferences are not premature but are utilized to form the groundwork for a logical transition but also they have a more remarkable function in rationalization and justification of her mistakes and ignorance before making amends in front of the audiences. All these answers can be shown in the realms of possibility. Now let’s turn back to Arabella’s story.

Atonement Movie Analysis

In Joe Wright‘s movie, the scenes in relation to the play  Arabella omit some vital fragments which will show the audiences the strong aspirational perspectives at the frontiers of imagination what a little girl put into action with play in which she aspires to participate as both an author and actress in an uncompromising manner. But when the book was reread after watching the movie and witnesses all climatical moments, each discriminating reading easily makes the reader got gripped on an exquisite retrospective rework on her advent of writing talents by means of The Trials of Arabella.

Atonement IAN McEWAN analysis
Atonement IAN McEWAN analysis

“ the whole thing’s a mistake. It’s the wrong… It’s the wrong genre! ”  ( cited part 1 chapter four)

She is sulking and Cecilia seems pretty indifferent and busy with her own affair.  If she is able to externalize so emphatically there must be really something amiss with the play or writerness. And if so what may infuriate her to the point of making her a malicious, undesirable, and unwelcomed girl?

Characters analysis in Atonement
Characters analysis in Atonement

Impartial Psychological Realism

She is describing the play as her first excursion into the drama that was written for Leon’s homecoming. Of course first of all we have to grasp the story of the real “Arabella” which is a lyric comedy in 3 acts and was first performed on 1 July 1933. We can easily deduce that in her play there are plagiarisms in light of many such as this fragment below cited from part 1, chapter one

“at the age of eleven she wrote her first story- a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folktales and lacking, she realized later,…”

Firstly, the gravity of the problem is not confined to these signs of plagiarism. We do not have a complete text of her play but we have a chance to take the “Arabella” as a point of departure to clarify the alterations and implications of these changes on her authorship career. Arabella also fits the plot with its timing of first performing 11 July 1933. This date coincides with a time unsurprisingly –stupendously–  in which Briony finishes The Trials of Arabella” two years later.. deceptions, misunderstandings, marriage affairs.

The most striking evidence which establishes a link between Arabella and Briony is presented with the three playlets in part 1, chapter one; At first, he, Leon, the prince suffers in grief as Arabella sank in loneliness and despair. In second, he is boasting of his younger sister, “Briony Tallis the writer, you must surely have heard of her.” In a third, she dreams that he punches the air in exultation as the final curtain fell.

Atonement Character Analysis

She should and has to be Arabella because; She was an incurable control and harmonious freak. In her room, for example, animals on the window ledge, all of them were angled to face their owner and even hens were delicately enclosed. Another detail she has a notebook written in a special code which is invented by herself although she has nothing to keep it secret and she has no one to learn about it. When Lola asked her about her role, she can not resist Lola’s implicit demand and she let her be Arabella but with a sulk and grudge in her mind which is echoed that she herself could only be Arabella because her thoughts were Briony’s thoughts.

As it is understood she was completely closed to the realities of the others- she was living in self-imposed –deception-inflicted and always self-righteous in the isolation of Tallis house with no pears who can play together and remains one option to prove herself in the adult world was that she had to invent the other minds in order to bear the idea of other minds were also equally alive. So her insufficiency in creating specific plays and acting out leads her to overcompensate for her delusions by adopting a sagacious posture what she will able to understand years after scarcely that impartiality was imperative for a moral point of view. So her desire to become both writer and Arabella was extremely preposterous just as it was the case of her last novel “Atonement” she had to conceal herself.

Being Revealed

“she could write a scene like the one by the fountain and she could include a hidden observer like herself”, cited page 38.

“If her cousin was not able to command the truth, then she would do it for her. I can. And I will.”  Cited from page 158

Until she finished and published her last novel “ Atonement” she skillfully manages to conceal herself from the reader, but unfortunately also the truth. As a result, the final revelation proves the impartial psychological realism ends with a calamity. The saga that starts with the substitution of the roles for Arabella between Lola and Briony preceded with concealing herself and finished skillfully with rendering herself back as a writer to us and as a hidden observer to her own reader in anticipation of … still in impartial point of view- incapable of sensing the beauty and the truth.

“Self-exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character’s weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself” cited from page 6

Whereas Arabella finishes with a happy ending the trials of Arabella was full of ugliness in infinitive variation. It ıs for this reason – cos of the prospect of being speculated, being revealed- is still the point where she reached at is not beyond the impartial point of view but far away from a moral point of view.

Would you like to read another after Atonement movie analysis? Then, follow Invictus and Goodbye Bafana link.

Pictures from Movie: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24106031

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