Atonement

There is this green dress in the movie version that Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) wears that I’ve been wanting to find. Somehow it embodies the entire movie for me, the period, the desire, the boldness of crashed dreams.
I didn’t read the book before I went to see the movie, but since McEwan’s books have long been among my favorite works of fiction, I went there on the strenght of the trailer and my penchant for period British drama. In September. And since the movie is launching just now in the States (aka it just started existing)I thought I might as well.
It is summer and the Tallis household is in the gripes of multiples visits. The cousins from the North are hiding from a shameful divorce caused by their mom’s indiscretion. The older brother is visiting from London with a friend who is a chocolate maganate and the two younger sisters have their own issues to deal with. Little Briony is putting on a play for her brother’s visit, while Cecilia, fresh out of university is languishing around her family in the hopes that something interesting/important will tear her from this lassitude, while trying very hard to conceal her interest in old friend Robbie Turner, the maid’s son, who is off to medical school on her father’s money. As Briony witnesses a few awkard encounters between the two during the day of the visit, she misreads Robbie’s behavior and does something that will change his life and his sister’s life forever.
For some reason, critics say Cecilia is quite a heinous character that is only redeemed by her enduring and intense love for Robbie. While she does seem quite impenetrable in the beginning of the film, the book makes her look more fully rounded than Keira’s character is written (which she plays very well by the way, without the help of her unrestrained pout).
While Briony makes a terrible mistake, which throws Robbie into jail and subsequently into war, and Cecilia in a nursing career, she will be haunted forever as a human being and as a writer by this act of innocence/ignorance that tainted her two most precious relationships.