With M on an awayday in Birmingham, I grasped the opportunity for a rare visit to the cinema. The alternative — continuing to work on the new pond — didn’t appeal quite so much.
Last time I did this, I pleasantly surprised myself with George Clooney, and the brilliant Good Night, and Good Luck, which he wrote, directed, and starred in.
Clooney featured again today, in the title role of Michael Clayton. A decent enough thriller with (of course) a smart twist to leave me giggling at the end. It’s one of those films where you have to keep concentrating to ensure you keep on top of the plot. Clooney plays a Mister Fixit type with a law firm, detailed to manage one of the firms’s leading lawyers who’s undergoing a severe mental breakdown while heading up a major lawsuit, defending some kind of agricultural biotechnology company. It’s underpinned by the usual little guy v conglomerate theme, and has other stock figures in it, like the woman lawyer glowing with enviable success on the outside, but tormented by a crisis of confidence, and conscience, inside. And baddy henchmen with unexplained access to total technology — CCTV, GPS, instant phone taps, ability to pass through locked and bolted doors without leaving a trace, while at the same time being medical and martial arts experts. That sort of thing. But a competent movie, and worth catching on DVD or satellite.
I wandered outside the cinema at 13:45, faced with a choice of dramas. One option was to spend the afternoon in the pub, watching the Rugby World Cup quarter final, and likely humiliation for England against Australia. The other was to hide from reality by stepping back into the cinema for Atonement. Both were starting at 14:00.
No contest really. An England World Cup quarter final is a story I’ve watched many times before, and I know how the story ends.
Atonement is the finest novel I’ve read in ten years. I’ve been an Ian McEwan fan since First Love, Last Rites, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1976, but Atonement is his stand-out work for me.
It was a harrowing read, but a superb piece of story-telling, written with all the richness and ingenuity I’ve come to expect from this writer. This is Serious literature with a capital S, but accessible enough to keep the ordinary reader on-board. Similar to The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the book is a complex concept, incorporating a parallel instance of itself. It works well in print. How would this be transferred to film?
Critics are divided but most seem to agree with me, that it works beautifully. The ravishing Keira Knightley plays Cecelia, James McAvoy the tragic Robbie – her lover. McAvoy in particular turns in a great performance as the servant’s son made-good, though not quite good enough to deflect the heavy artillery of aristocratic prejudice. The story revolves around Cecelia’s sister, Briony, now a successful writer, whose own life, and the lives of her sister and Robbie are all but destroyed by a lie she tells as a troubled 13 year old. We see Briony at three key stages of her life, and it’s her story that is really the story of the film, even though it’s those she comes into contact with, and unwittingly taints, that get most exposure on screen.
Can’t say much more about the plot without spoiling it. Don’t make the same mistake as the girls sitting behind me, who trooped off to the toilet just seconds before the heart-rending denouement. Or maybe that would be preferable. Maybe it’s better to live in darkness and hope, than within a beautifully illuminated despair. Atonement is a film whose final moments will turn you upside down and shake your emotions from you. I’d read the book, but had forgotten the pain to be unearthed. I’d forgotten that this is a conceit within a conceit, and that while you are the plaything of a clever author, there is always the potential for reality to become delusion, to become reality again.
Which is which?
So you reinterpret all that’s gone before, and like me, may find yourself standing alone in an empty cinema urging the credits to stop rolling and return to the story for a final, uplifting plot-twist.
Or again like me, standing outside a cinema in the blinking, blinding light of mid-afternoon, looking at life’s small change jangling around you: squabbling shoppers, courting teenagers, bored traffic wardens, and asking yourself that same question:
What is reality and what is delusion?
As I loiter, unsure what to do next, a scarlet-faced student stumbles by in an England rugby shirt. “We won mate! England won!”
I chuckle. Yeah, of course we did. With a final thankful glance at the cinema, my question is answered.
