“The Story Can Resume”: “No rhymes, no embellishments, no adjectives…”

Well, I’ve critiqued movies and music, so naturally one would suppose I would critique books next, but let’s save that for my May post possibly, shall we?

This isn’t really the same kind of blog as the other ones have been – it’s more of a side note – so instead of calling it the third one of the series, let’s just consider it blog number two and a half, or something like that.

Essentially, this is what is presently on my mind:

I just finished watching the movie Atonement (yes, I know it came out several years ago, and no, I didn’t read the book first) and I’ll admit that even though I tend to enjoy a sappy, romantic comedy over a sad, romantic drama… and although I was several shades of depressed after the movie was over, I did get that strange, cathartic feeling that sometimes makes the whole experience worthwhile. 

*Warning: Spoiler*

As someone who enjoys writing, I believe it was the writing aspect of this film that truly appealed to me. And oddly enough, it wasn’t really until the very ending scenes – hearing some of the last words that Briony spoke, in fact – that I was truly moved by the story as a whole.  There was just something so hauntingly beautiful about the ending… about Briony attempting to atone for her sins in reality by solving them in the literary world… something so poetic and pathetic (in the pathos sense of the word) about having two people (two star-crossed lovers, no less) be dead yet still have their love and their story live on. They had been frozen in time and space… now only existing in the literary realm… immortalized there for all eternity.    

It’s such a poignant illustration of the power of the author… the power to change the course of history for her characters… to decide their fates… yet it is still up to the readers from that moment forward to keep them alive after the final word has been written.

It was such a strange unfolding to have her deliberately alter the destiny of two “real” people in order to give them the proper ending they never received but should have been granted… to give them not only the ending they were denied and would have wanted for themselves but also the ending that her readers (and likewise, the film’s audience) ultimately desired and/or expected.    

(source)

“So my sister and Robbie never had the time together they both so longed for and deserved, which, ever since, I’ve... always felt I prevented. But what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So, in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I’d like to think this wasn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness.” ~Atonement, 2007