As for “truth telling,” I think it’s interesting that the artifice of the whole story pretends to a truth–one in which Briony is forgiven, Robbie is vindicated, and Celia and Robbie live on in happiness. But the artifice is broken in an added-on epilogue, where the reader is given the “reality” that none of that actually happens. And of course, none of it actually happens. The whole thing is a novel pretending to be a memoir.

I am interested in the phrase “truth telling” and would like to hear you say more about that and how it relates to fiction.

I am not familiar with Richardson’s, Pamela. Maybe that would aid in my understanding, though I sensed some of the themes of class and disruption that you mentioned anyway.

I will need to read the book, because I didn’t mean to suggest that McEwan was trying to redeem real life mistakes through ficton but that the story raised the issue. How Briony tries to “make” them have that time together by giving her book the happy ending.

And yet, it is her happy ending as we discover. (Whose to say they might not both have forgiven her; so even their reactions are in her imagination).

What I like most about the idea of irrevocability that the story has is what it says about the sacrifices of war as well as the gravity of lies.

From the movie’s standpoint, I think, in the end, I felt the story was as much about Briony’s need for forgiveness as it was about Robbie’s need for vindication, since he was wronged but she was the wrong-doer.

Perhaps we can have another discussion about the “truth-telling” aspects, after I read the novel. I guess, like so many discussions here, I’ll have to go read a book and then return to the table. I look forward to experiencing the novel and hope the film doesn’t color my view too much.

Funnily enough, on my birthday, Jen and I went with a few friends to the film version of Atonement. I like the movie quite a bit, and agree with the things that you have posted here. I couldn’t imagine seeing the movie without having read the book, however. McEwan’s novel is really, really tremendous, and I highly recommend it to anyone. The movie doesn’t do it justice, to be honest with you, and that was the main feeling I had coming out of the movie. The literary quality of the story–and the literary sense of “truth telling”–just doesn’t come alive in film.

As for the issue of rape, yes I suppose it is odd. McEwan is playing on the idea of the eighteenth and nineteenth century British novel–from Richardson and Fielding to Austen and Dickens. In those novels–in Richardson’s Pamela, most notably–rape is often a violation that takes place as a rift in social mores and class. I think McEwan very perceptibly is interested in harkening back to that sensibility, that idea of society and class as something that can be blemished, qualified, and disrupted–by rape and by war. It’s interesting in Atonement that the young girl is raped but doesn’t, in the same way, get punished for it (spoiler alert: she marries her rapist, and they seem to live on happily enough, as disturbing as that may seem); instead, the wrong man is punished for a rape he didn’t commit.

It’s interesting to me that you mention that Atonement is about the power of fiction to redeem real life mistakes. I think that’s up for interpretation. In fact, the novel makes me feel the title Atonement, for instance, is completely ironic, that no atonement is truly achieved, because the atonement is entirely a fiction, as made up as Briony’s play, or her insistence that Robbie raped the young girl. Those who are violated are never really given a chance for redemption or freedom, we find out. So what atonement really is there?

In any case, it’s a good film, not a great one. The novel is great.