It is the hot (for England) summer of 1935, in a nice big country house in Sussex. The Tallis, a high class family, inhabit it for the summer holidays. The father, a high government commissioner, is away in his London office, busy at work with preparations for a European war that back then, in mid 1930s, is becoming a real possibility. Among the people at the house we find the mother, tortured by never-ending migraines; the elder daughter (22 year-old Cecilia); the younger one (13 year-old Briony); the brother Leon; business man Paul Marshall; and finally three cousins from the North, on a visit. Along with a due bunch of servants, we find Robbie Turner as well, the son of the governess, who is also a protegé of the Tallis family.
Briony is the central character in this amazing story. At 13, she is theoretically on the brink of leaving childhood, but she is also well into that strong egotism so typical of childhood and early (sometimes full) adolescence. Nonetheless, in this case to her ordinary child's solipsism, you also add up a great imaginative creative power.
Briony, thrilled by story creation
She's thrilled by the act of creating tales. Writing, translating into words the awesome, or just plain, events of existence is something she definitely loves to do: she is truly a writer, a narrator in the making, a young person whose life will, in years to come, likely be devoted to literature, to the re-shaping of reality in the form of fiction. It already is, actually, this very day, as she spends most of her hours putting little stories on paper with increasing skill. She imagines stories all along, which she later has her mother (and about everyone else) read and evaluate: she likes showing off her talent. Her emotional development, her new experiences and thoughts will find immediate reflection on those pages she is constantly filling up.
But on this particular summer day extraordinary things will happen. Things which will mark Briony's fate as well as those around and linked to her. The fate of the people at the house that very moment is going to be determined by Briony's imaginative powers. Today is the day, and tragedy will take place.
What is going on? Some cousins from the north are coming to the Sussex mansion, in order to spend a few weeks with the Tallis: 15 year old-Lola and her two younger twin-brothers. Also among the new guests today are Leon (Briony's brother) and a friend of his, Paul Marshall, already a successful young businessman. Just then, immediately before the arrival of the guests, Briony has finished a play that she has intitled Arabella, which she, full of excitement, of course intends to represent before her beloved brother and the rest of the guests. For that, she counts on the (reluctant) aid of the cousins: Lola and the twins. So she calls out for the due rehearsals to the annoyance of the northern cousins, which would rather do anything else. Go play by the swimming pool, for instance.
At the same time, Robbie, the housekeeper's son, spends the morning in dreamy introspection, thinking of quite a promising future unfolding before him: to his literature degree he has just achieved, he speculates with adding a new one: Medicine, no less. And of course he also thinks, and quite so, of Cecilia, the Tallis elder daughter, whom he has known since they were children. He fancies her. That morning, he is fantasizing about her, while inmersed in his bathtub. And at one point, he emerges from the bathtub and reaches the nearby desk, where he sits down to typewrite a letter to Cecilia Tallis.
He playfully tries different versions, some of them a bit too rude to really think of delivering, but which he writes as well, just for the fun of it (maybe thinking what if, anyway).... He finishes the definitive version, one he thinks is OK: a more or less polite version of course, of what he had to say. But, what happens then?...yes, we guessed it: he mistakenly ends up sending the wrong letter, one of the rude versions he had been playing with, one which he thought he had discarded. The rudest one, in fact, one which reproduces a explosive slung word. Explosive, that is, for the place and time and the vehicle, a letter.
Fancying, invoking tragedy
Cecilia and Robbie have known each other since they were children. They are in love, only they still haven't become fully aware of it. They soon will, that same day actually, but the most awful misunderstanding is going to stand on their way, also that same night. And it is the deliverer of the letter (writer-in the-making Briony) who will be the responsible for it.
After Briony has given Robbie's letter to her sister, one definitive scene will take place. In the evening, the guests (including Robbie) gather up for dinner. Afterwards, having both got up discreetly from the table, Cecilia and Robbie head for the library, where they will end up making love with shelves full of books as a frame. Briony just enters the library while they are at it, and well, she sees the thing, and being just 13 (and also being high class England in the 1930s) she does not quite understand what is going on.
But her powerful imagination is quickly set into motion. A dark imagination at that moment, way darker than that of a similar creature: Ana, from The Spirit of the Beehive. Briony is more proactive than Ana, and she will unconciously generate what will turn out to be injustice and cruelty, born out of that abundant inner world of hers.
Earlier that day, Briony had also witnessed something by the lake, again involving Cecilia and Robbie, another weird (to her child's imagination) event, that she again will process in the wrong way.
Later at night, in the woods surrounding the house, something horrible will happen. Is it a rape? An attempt? The victim is Lola, the 15-year-old cousin from the north. Everyone is distressed, and the police are quickly called in. All people at the house are interrogated on the crime. Who might the assailant be? But Briony, her imagination out of control, has already decided who he is.
Atonement is a great exploratory work, a must for those readers who wish to be told a good story, also for those who like reflecting on the power of literature, who want perhaps to manufacture good valuable literature themselves, for the story which is told and the horizons the narration might reach. The great power of fiction, and its own reality.
History itself is a construction of our minds, even if its based on factual truth, it is after all a series of texts, which we create and shape. So will the lives be of those people in Briony's hands. Narrations. Imagination can be a source of aesthetical beauty. Also of lies, arbitrariness, ultimately disaster. But it too has the potential of eventually creating some form of posthumous symbolic justice.
The destiny of the flesh
As an author, as any author worth the name, Briony is some sort of a goddess, thus capable of instilling life on the creatures of her imagination, putting them on stage and set them out to think, live and experience. Also, as we will discover, she will even have the capacity to alter the lives of the physical beings around her, retelling their stories and destinies. Early in the movie, we had seen Briony alone in her room in the middle of the act of writing, so precious to her, and we have spoted some diminutive figures by her side, like ready to be manipulated by her, if she wishes. They might be a symbol of her power of creation and literary manipulation.
We are made of flesh and, true, that flesh will be vanishing in the course of just a few years or decades. After that, it is only remembrance that will remain of us. Our flesh will have become just a text, a narration, an oral one or, if we are lucky enough, written by someone. If anything, we will have turned into a story, such is the destiny of our (now) tangible matter. What is to be done with that bunch of texts which constitutes our identity, once we are gone? We are in the hands of those who will carry out our memory, those executors of our narrations, those who establish its basis and those who will add to it. If they exist, if we are fortunate enough to have them. Otherwise, nothing will be left of us, fair or not.
Briony will discover just that in due time. At one point, people are gone and all that is remaining is their tale. She will learn that this tale can be retold or reinterpreted, enriched with new meanings, clever variations. And in doing so, in some mysterious way some sort of peculiar justice, should we say rebalancing (in an aesthetical or moral sense), can even be made, without betraying the essential truth.
In Briony's case, it was a matter of atonement, of self-punishment. A moral challenge. But overall, if we are the chosen ones, if we have awaken a strong mind's creative power and put it at the service of our story...well, it is hard to imagine a bigger fortune.
No comments:
Post a Comment