Atonement (4 stars out of 4 stars)

And no, I didn't steal that rating from Ebert. I will say that in terms of pure enjoyment, the movie ranks lower than that. I will never see it again, for instance. It's tragic to the nth degree. Three main characters, and the central violation that occurs - which is so seemingly small and gigantic at the same time - causes irreparable wounds. Which makes you wonder, in the end, just what kind of atonement can realistically occur to make up for this sin? The only atonement offered up, that I could see, is the ending to the book that someone writes about the entire situation - an entirely invented ending, one in which there's a degree of happiness that is experienced for the couple who are hopelessly devoted to and in love with one another. That ending, in other words, appears to be the only atonement made for what happened that one evening so many years ago - when everyone's lives were destroyed by a lie.

But I found that shallow, and I honestly cannot believe that the writer, played wonderfully and beautifully by an older Vanessa Redgrave (she almost stole the entire movie with her monologue to the camera, even though I think that was just about the only lines she had the entire film), at all felt that she had atoned for anything by writing a book in which the characters experienced happiness, instead of the tragedy they experienced in life. It reminded me of the mythos in literature, among novelists, like Joyce or Yeats, who sometimes acted as though by writing they could achieve immortality. James Joyce, in particular, seemed to believe something like that in writing Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.

There's no real satisfaction, no atonement, to be had in knowing that you will be remembered by other people who themselves will one day die. You could see the pain and disbelief on Vanessa Redgrave's aged face as she explained why she did that; it didn't work. It was all she could offer, because she couldn't undo what she had done, but that offering was impossible. I viewed the movie as saying there was no atonement possible that we could provide to really pay for our sins - that our best offerings, and let's face it maybe if Shakespeare wrote a sonnet immortalizing how wonderful a person you are, it might be really nice even if he horribly abused you in life, are just laughable when placed beside our misdeeds. In that sense, it was almost as though the movie was a tragic telling of the force and weight of our crimes against a holy God.

The other thing I continually thought of watching the movie was Thomas Hardy's novels - particularly Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Ubervilles. One of the things I think of with those two books is how Hardy would use as a plot device purely random events to motivate an excruciatingly tragic story in which a person of great potential for happiness is basically "picked" randomly to live a ruinous life. There's truth in that. I can't help it - even though I'm a Calvinist by disposition, I nonetheless believe in randomness. God's sovereignity works out in history through the secondary causes of a random data generating process. I suppose this is what is meant by the phrase, "God distributes the errors." Had you not taken that turn, the car wouldn't have hit you, and you wouldn't have lost everyone so dear to you. That it is held up by a sovereign, loving God, and a belief in the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, and God's covenantal signs and promises, like baptism, I couldn't go on. I couldn't even dare to cross the street without that superstructure beneath and around me. I would shake with the horror of the vacuum of death that threatens to dispose of everything dear to me. Nevertheless, the movie was one of those kinds of stories - an incorrect interpretation of events leading to a chain of actions that ultimately destroy - and I mean destroy - one's entire life and the lives of those most precious to you. The horror of it!

I am reminded of a discussion in college once where I told the teacher that the book we had read, something by Richard Wright, was painful and important and thought-provoking, but that I didn't feel comfortable saying that I liked it, or even that it was good. I feel the same about this movie. You should see it, but maybe just once, and never again.

Update: Interesting. The wikipedia article interprets the movie somewhat differently than me. For instance, the article (a) says Lola was genuinely raped, whereas I was certain it was consensual. For instance, Lola immediately begins apologizing to the sister when she is discovered (as the man she is with runs away). But then secondly, earlier in the day, I was pretty sure that she had had sex with the man (who was much older than her, as Lola is portrayed as maybe 12-13 herself). When Lola says the twins have given her Indian burns on her arm, I was pretty sure she was looking for an alibi for the rough sexual encounter she had had with the man earlier (he also indicates that she had been rough with her by pointing to a cut on his face). Maybe it was rape, but it's not hard to make the case that it was actually a secret, taboo sexual discretion on his part, in which she was complicit. The other difference is (b) that the article suggests the sister had a genuine misunderstanding, whereas I saw it as a combination of suppression of key details due to heart-ache, youth, a fanciful imagination, and hysterics. That she continually thinks Robi is violent and a potential rapist. I, on the other hand, saw the sister in a state of heart-ache and confusion because she was in love with the older Robi (she was a fanciful 12-13 year old, and he a college graduate). Maybe the novel and the film differ in these respects, as it's based on an Ian McEwan novel. The article does agree with my interpretation as to what the precise act of atonement is, though: "The novel is, therefore, her atonement for the naïve but destructive acts of a 13-year-old child, which she has always regretted." But, I am standing by my claim that the film presents this offering in an ambiguous, even futile, way.