Our Dear ILTBTA Readers,
We hope this post finds you well. It has been two long weeks since we have seen you last with our labour of cinematic love. Fourteen days since we honoured your eyeballs with our missive on 12 Angry Men, which we’re sure has felt like an eternity for all. We wish to apologise by offering you this post on the beautiful British drama Atonement. Please, focus on the “beautiful British” part of our previous sentence and not the “British drama” for we believe that that will serve you well in this delightfully dramatic gripping movie programme.
Until we meet again,
ILTBTA
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: My sister Rachel genuinely tried for years to get me to watch this, but based on name alone, I thought it sounded like a boring slog. Boy was I wrong! The phrase I used in The Spreadsheet was “edge-of-your-seat drama.”
Tyler: Here’s what I wrote of Atonement in The Spreadsheet: “I liked this so much more than I expected; incorporating the typewriter clacking into the score was brilliant.” Will it stand up upon rewatch? Let’s clickity-clack away and find out.
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): Thirteen-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
Miss Briony Tallis, age 13, clacks away at a play on her typewriter: The Trials of Arabella. We’re at her family’s estate in … idk, England someplace, and the year is 1935. She has an older sister, Cecilia, and an older brother, Leon, who is bringing “chocolate millionaire”1 Paul Marshall with him. They’re also being visited by their cousins: twin boys Jackson and Pierrot and their sister, 15-year-old Lola. Briony attempts to conscript her cousins into play rehearsal, but the boys quickly race off to go swimming instead. Left alone to stew about how no one appreciates her ~art~, she looks out her window and sees … the housekeeper’s son, Robbie (with whom she is entirely infatuated2), and Cecilia arguing and her jumping into a fountain. Weird!
Ellen: The sound of the typewriter becomes our constant companion, and the way it’s folded into the sound design is beautiful.
Tyler: RT because I agree. It took me all of one minute into the movie and I was already vibing to the typewriter-and-strings score. (Here’s a link to the score for those who want to listen along at home.)
We seamlessly roll back time to the twins running downstairs, asking Cecilia if they can go swim. She agrees, and heads outside to get water for the flowers in the vase she’s holding. There she meets Robbie. The two clearly know each other well but are kind of tense, perhaps due to their difference in status or the fact that Mr. Tallis is paying Robbie’s way through Cambridge. Either way, a small argument results in the vase breaking! Robbie finds it kind of funny, but Cecilia is pissed enough to strip down to her unders and jump in the fountain to rescue the pieces. Robbie is kind of astounded, but respectfully turns away when she gets out, but he is holding onto the broken handle of the vase awfully tight. She snatches it from him as she passes and goes back inside.
Ellen: I know the whole “I’m having a big feeling but I’m a gentleman in front of a lady so I’ll just clench my fists really hard” thing is a trope but what do you want from me: it. is. hot.
Meanwhile, Leon arrives! He seems perfectly lovely but for his taste in company: Paul Marshall is insufferable. He never shuts up about Business and Chocolate and The Chocolate Business, bragging about everything from his upcoming government contract to provide the army with “Amo” chocolate bars to his invention of a so-called choctail. He’s also a little too interested in palling around with Lola and watching her eat chocolate.
Robbie has now taken up with his own typewriter, making several attempts at an apology letter to Cecila. In one frustrated version, he talks about kissing her sweet [redacted]. With the explicit version out of his system, he writes a nice note, puts on a tux, and takes the letter off to dinner. He spots Briony on his walk up to the main house and gives it to her to give to her sister. He mistakenly believes Briony won’t snoop, and in an even bigger mistake: it’s the saucy draft! Briony loses her whole mind and tells Lola about it, who calls him a “sex maniac.”3
Tyler: This is very much an old-fashioned version of “writing that angry email with no intention of sending it but accidentally doing so anyway,” which we can all relate to in one way or another.
Robbie and Cecilia (in a stunning green dress) see each other in the doorway and head into the library, where they profess their love for each other! They get busy against the bookshelves when of course Briony walks in, and in light of her earlier misinterpretations, thinks something absolutely horrible is happening. She doesn’t have a chance to say anything at dinner, however, because the twins are missing! While everyone fans out into search parties, Briony’s flashlight beam sweeps across a man assaulting Lola! Lola doesn’t know who it was, but Briony is certain: Robbie. She tells the police as much, and thus when Robbie returns later with both boys unharmed, he’s extremely confused by his reception4. He’s arrested over the protests of Cecilia and his mother, who bangs on the hood of the police car demanding he be released.
Tyler: Another compliment for the sound design: along with Briony’s piano playing, Robbie’s mom’s banging on the police car is also seamlessly incorporated into the score. It’s a beautiful blend of diegetic and non-diegetic music.
Four years later, Robbie and two companions named Nettle and Mace are hiding in an attic in France, but at least some nice Frenchmen give them bread! They’ve been separated from their respective units and begin to trudge toward Dunkirk. When questioned as to why he isn’t an officer, seeing as he’s quite smart and speaks French, Robbie replies that you’re not eligible for officer training if you enlist from prison. Flashback to six months earlier, and Robbie and Cecilia meet for tea before he’s set to deploy. She’s now a nurse, and she’s cut off all contact from her family. Robbie feels guilty about that, but she loves him above all. They make plans to meet at her friend’s cottage by the sea on his next leave and part ways.
Back in England, Briony has put off attending Cambridge to train as a nurse in Cecilia’s old unit at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. She writes to Cecilia often, but never receives a response. She and a friend discuss their love lives, and Briony tells a story about how she once pretended to drown in the river to get Robbie to save her. He did not love that. He’s similarly not loving Dunkirk, where we track through the chaos in one long shot on the beach. The wounded are being left behind, so it’s a good thing he’s hiding his gaping, infected chest wound and hallucinations (mostly)! His compatriots tuck him in with a blanket and a crust of bread, saying he just has to make it until 7 AM.
Tyler: Atonement is out here shooting horses in the head and showing some graphic gore/war injuries: this is NOT your typical British drama!
Tyler: Also, the aforementioned extended single shot at Dunkirk is incredible for a non-war movie. I feel like your typical “British drama” excels more at the smaller-scale interpersonal stuff while leaving the larger set pieces and such to the big budget movies, but this nails both.
Three weeks earlier, we see Briony once again typing during her spare time, working on a story called “Two Figures by A Fountain.” Wonder what that could be about! She gets a harsh dose of reality as hundreds of wounded soldiers flood the hospital, and she ends up sitting with a French man in his dying moments. Later, she sees a newsreel that mentions that Paul Marshall and Lola are going to be married. She lowkey crashes the wedding, but the couple either doesn’t notice her or pretends not to. Briony goes to Cecilia’s place, because she won’t answer her letters… and Robbie is there!! He’s on leave, and he’s enraged that Briony has not accepted responsibility for her actions, despite Briony’s apology and offer to correct her testimony. Cecilia calms him down, and Robbie instructs Briony to set the record straight with “no rhymes, no embellishments, no adjectives.” She tells them that it was actually Paul Marshall, but seeing as he just married Lola, she can’t testify against him. Briony departs with her task, leaving Cecilia and Robbie to enjoy what’s left of his leave.
Decades later, Briony is a successful novelist giving an interview about her twenty-first and final book: Atonement. She’s dying from vascular dementia, but even after all these years: same haircut. This book is mostly autobiographical, with an important change: she never went to see Cecilia that day. And furthermore, she can never atone for her mistake, because Robbie died of septicemia at Dunkirk, and Cecilia drowned months later during an underground flood at the Balham tube station caused by bombing during The Blitz. Briony explains that there’s no purpose to be served by honesty, and the least she can do is grant the couple happiness in fiction. The film closes on an imagined scene of a happy and reunited Cecilia and Robbie, laughing on the beach outside the cottage they had planned to visit.
Tyler: This movie does such a good job of making you root for Cecilia and Robbie that for a minute you actually think Robbie got out of Dunkirk despite looking halfway dead the last time we saw him.
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … the Marshall Chocolate Company!
Hey everyone! Remember the good old days of the Amo Chocolate Bar, made popular by its inclusion in ration kits in WWII? “The boys need their Amo,” remember that?? Make that your only association with the Marshall Chocolate Company today! Forget anything you may have heard about the crimes escapades of our previous CEO Paul Marshall and focus on the tasty, satisfying chocolate, won’t you please? Seriously. We beg of you.
Use promo code ILTBTA upon your next purchase to donate a portion of your money toward our renaming campaign. We salute you.
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Atonement’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
Atonement is based on the 2001 metafictional novel of the same name by Ian McEwan (sorry not sorry for the hyperlinks). One of McEwan’s later novels, On Chesil Beach, was also adapted into a movie, with McEwan again teaming up with Saoirse Ronan.
Tyler: If nothing else, this movie and Wikipedia research has introduced me to a fun new word in “metafiction.” Now that I think of it, the incredible book I just finished could probably be called metafiction!
Atonement was a reunion of sorts for director Joe Wright and star Keira Knightley, who first worked together on the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. The two paired up again in 2012 for yet another classic romantic novel adaptation, Anna Karenina.
Wright also adapted the hit novel The Woman in the Window in 2021, but the production had a whole host of issues. The novel and film inspired the hilariously-titled satirical miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.
James McAvoy was cast by director Joe Wright after being impressed with his acting in a play six years prior, as well as resonating with McAvoy’s working-class roots in Glasgow, which he felt worked well for the character of Robbie. His only hesitation was whether a “five-foot-seven, slightly built, ghostly pale Scotsman had what it takes to be a true screen idol” who, according to McAvoy, “was meant to be this 6 foot tanned Adonis.”
Ellen: James, honey, do not worry.
McAvoy used to be a self-proclaimed video game addict who once burned video games on his stove to help get rid of his addiction.
Due to schedule and budget restrictions, the film’s production had only two full days to film the war scenes set on the beaches of Dunkirk (filmed in Redcar, England). As such, Wright and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey opted to go with the stunning five-and-a-half-minute long tracking shot that you see in the film. That shot took three takes, with a Steadicam operator moving between a tracking vehicle, to being on foot, to being on a rickshaw, then back on foot.
Ellen: I recently saw a reel showing the behind the scenes of how they did a similar (albeit smaller scale) shot for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and the transition from one apparatus to another is crazy! I feel like it would take me three takes just to not bobble the camera.
Tyler: Shout-out to future-ILTBTA-topic 1917 for doing this for basically the entire movie to great effect.
Atonement was nominated for seven Academy Awards, with Dario Marianelli winning for Best Original Score. Saoirse Ronan was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, making her the seventh youngest actress to do so.
Atonement also won the Shooting and Fine Arts Award at the 2008 Pyongyang International Film Festival (yes, THAT Pyongyang!), a thing that apparently existed at one point in time.
Oscar NomNomNomz
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role5. And the nomnomnominees are:
Paul Marshall’s “choctail": crushed ice, rum, and melted chocolate
Tea with two sugars
A small hunk of bread in a dank old factory in Dunkirk
James Snack-Avoy
And the Oscar goes to … the choctail! Unfortunately, Timothée Chalamet (in full Wonka attire) intercepted the choctail on its way to the stage, so we will accept this award on its behalf.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to rescue the pieces of The Academy’s prized vase from the bottom of a fountain. I love this movie, and I think it’s the ideal drama: I care about everyone, I don’t know what they’re going to do next, and I really believe all of the performances. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are very nice to look at. The nonlinear storytelling was well-executed without being confusing, and it was mostly done to show us something and then add context after the fact, so I appreciated it being purposeful (as opposed to, say, season 1 of The Witcher). We’ve mentioned it several times, but the sound design really puts this over the top for me. It beautifully blended the sounds of the movie into a rightfully Oscar-winning score. My deepest apologies to Rachel: you were right!
Tyler: I’d like to frolic happily along an English beach with The Academy before retiring to our seaside cottage. I’ll try not to just reiterate everything you already said, but this movie is really good at pretty much everything: well-written characters we care about played by fantastic actors (who also had some much-appreciated steaminess), a well-paced narrative with some fun non-linearity to it to keep you on your toes, some beautiful shots in seemingly every scene (e.g., basically all of the gifs throughout this post6), and a phenomenal score underneath it all that adds actual tension to a drama. Top that all off with the gut punch of the realization/admission that the final apology was imagined the entire time … and you’ve got yourself an amazing movie.
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!
If you’re a weirdo like Tyler and use the social media site formerly known as Twitter, feel free to follow us there @BlankTheAcademy for ILTBTA updates, rejected jokes, and other random movie-related musings. Once we reach a million followers, we’ll offer to purchase the @ILTBTA handle from the butthead who snagged it before us.
ILTBTA is also on Letterboxd, the social networking site for movie fans. Follow us there to read our Spreadsheet comments of our ILTBTA movies, plus our ratings of other movies we watch!
If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Remember how we told you a few months ago in our Three Smart Girls post that the 1985 black-comedy Prizzi’s Honor was nowhere to be found on the internet? We even made a whole new section for it called “In Memoriam”? Well the new year presumably thawed some streaming rights because Prizzi’s Honor is back from the dead! And to celebrate ILTBTA’s first zombie post, we will honor it with our jokes before the streaming gods realize their mistake and summon it back to the depths of the dark web (we presume).
Prizzi’s Honor is available to rent from Amazon Prime Video. Thank you Jeff Bezos.
Until then, clack clack clack clackity clack clack *zshooooop* clickity clack clack clack!
Ellen: Same.
Ellen: (more emphatically) SAME.
I bet you thought this was the “Sounds like my ex-wife!” footnote. Try again.
Sounds like my ex-wife!
Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.
Tyler: We sometimes struggle to find decent gifs from movies because there just aren’t a lot of usable ones out there (or gif-worthy moments from the movie to begin with). We had no such issue with Atonement.