A Fiction Within a Fiction
Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for the film Atonement.
“For what, after all, is the difference between a memory and a fantasy?” It may be difficult, especially for imaginative minds, to distinguish the thin line between reality, such as the past and fantasy. Oftentimes, fantasy, with its possibility of anything inherent in its definition, is much more appealing than reality; it is frequently thought of as an escape from reality. Since the invention of storytelling, authors have blurred the line between fantasy and reality in order to create hopeful, appealing fictional stories that capture the interests of their readers. However, most people are cautious of wandering too far from the real world, understanding the distinction between the two worlds. Atonement, a fictional story in itself, is a prime example of the consequences that befall and create a domino effect on the reality of the characters within its own story.
Based on the novel by Ian McEwan of the same name, Atonement is a 2007 British romantic drama. Set in England before, during, and decades after World War II, the story begins with Briony Tallis, a young writer of thirteen who witnesses a few sexually charged scenes between her older sister, Cecilia, and the housekeeper’s boy, Robbie. Additionally, she reads an erotic letter Robbie had written to Cecilia containing the word “cunt,” which she calls “the worst word you can possibly imagine.” She misreads these situations, concluding that Robbie is a “sex maniac,” not understanding that Cecilia and Robbie are in love with each other. Later, she makes a false accusation about Robbie, sending him to jail. As time passes, Briony begins to understand her mistake while the tragic, star-crossed lovers try to hold on to each other in the midst of World War II.
The movie opens with a black screen, the title of the film is revealed in a classic, old-fashioned typographic text with accompanying typewriter sounds. In film, diegetic sounds are sounds that are from objects on screen. Non-diegetic sounds are sounds only the audience hears. When, at the end of the movie, it is revealed that Briony has actually written a novel called Atonement, the beginning title sequence and the typewriter sounds now hold a new meaning. Instead of the non-diegetic sound used artistically to hint at the importance of the theme of writing in the movie or perhaps a diegetic sound bridge to the opening scene, the sound now becomes metadiegetic and as Catrin Watts puts it, can be interpreted as “the result of older Briony beginning to write her manuscript.” It is also stated that Briony has created scenes within the novel that are fictional to give Robbie and Cecilia a happy ending, adding another layer of reality and narration to the original story presented by the movie. The theme of storytelling is now revealed and the ethics that come along with it are highlighted. Ethical storytelling draws attention to the process of storytelling itself, and the trust that the audience puts into the narration not to lie, misrepresent, or omit information. This trust in Briony is broken with her attempt at atonement; the whole movie can be reevaluated with this new knowledge, calling into question “the distinction between reality and fiction in the film,”—what actually happened and what is made up by Briony for her novel.
After the title sequence, the opening scene is a thirteen-year-old Briony sitting at her desk, writing her play. The only sounds are birds chirping and the typewriter clacking. As she finishes her play, non-diegetic music begins to play. The music continues to play as Briony gets up from her desk and walks through the house. Strangely, the typewriter sounds do not stop either. Instead, they have become part of the music. With the typewriter sound being first diegetic and then smoothly transitioning to non-diegetic as it becomes part of the music score, the reality of the world within the film becomes blurred with the fictional story that the audience watching knows it to be. Again, the theme of fiction and reality are emphasized. Not only is the typewriter sound used as a tool to blur the various levels of narration within and of the film, the music and typewriter sound becomes a symbol of “Briony’s overactive imagination.”
Later on, when Robbie hands over a letter for Briony to give to Cecilia, sound is used as a narrational and emblematic tool for the film to show both Robbie and Briony’s minds during the scene. After Robbie hands over the letter and Briony runs away with it, he says her name softly. His slow realization that he has given Briony the wrong letter is shown by the audiovisual shot of the lighter he was playing with before handing over the letter as a starting point to backtrack through his actions. The diegetic sound of the lighter then becomes nondiegetic and part of the music as the flashback continues. Other sounds of the past, such as Robbie tapping the letter twice against his door before exiting as well as the opera music he put on when writing the letter earlier, now also play as the camera pans to the letter he meant to send still on his desk. These small audio techniques are used as earmarks to smoothly play back the scene in Robbie’s mind.
To return to the present, the lighter is heard again and the scene cuts back to the present with Robbie screaming Briony’s name. As Robbie figures out his mistake, a cut of Briony running back to the house is shown, with music and fast typewriter sounds playing. The same music is playing as she runs into the house and opens the letter frantically. The audience gets the sense that her mind and imagination are racing, indicated by the music, her running, and her carelessness when tearing open the letter. When the music ends, the word “cunt” in the letter is shown letter by letter with individual typewriter keystrokes. The shot and sound are the same as in the scene when Robbie types it out, “but the attack on each sound is much stronger now that [it] has been transferred out of the reality of the film.”
Sound design for a film is usually utilized only to emphasize the narrative within the film, but Atonement’s use of sound forces the audience to notice it on its most surface level of narration, often the one most unnoticed—the film itself. The film uses these unique sound techniques to draw the audience’s attention not only to the process of storytelling in literature, but also the process of filmmaking. This attention to the process of filmmaking is not a consequence of careless artistic direction but another way to stress the distinct yet fine line between reality and fiction.
The movie also uses editing as a way to blur the lines of the reality within the fictional world and the reality of the audience. Editing choices within the film show the playback of the memories, realities, and dreams of the characters. One of the most notable scenes of the movie is the five-minute one-shot scene showing the evacuation of Dunkirk. The shot first follows Robbie, takes a detour to show the various activities happening around him, and then pans back to Robbie as he heads into a bar. For a film that has been impressively edited to cut between flashbacks, multiple storylines, and even the same scenes but from different perspectives, the lack of editing in this scene is “hardly subtle, but that’s the point.” The one-shot makes the scene more personal—“by being forced to observe what’s occurring, [the audience] begin[s] to understand the soldiers’ experiences.” This artistic choice effectively takes the audience into the reality of the fictional story, since, in real-life, the world is seen and experienced without any cuts; “the longer the camera refuses to cut, the more a growing level of hopelessness and aimlessness boils over.” The scene ends on a wide shot of the chaos on the beach, leaving the audience with only a sense of what it really would have been like to be on that beach so many years ago.
Later that night, Robbie falls asleep and what is presumably his dream is played in a montage. The montage, from Robbie’s perspective, shows the significant events that led to his arrest happening in reverse, him walking in a field of red flowers, singing soldiers, him standing in front of a movie with the characters on screen kissing, Cecilia standing in front of the Tallis mansion, waiting for him, the scene of his arrest in reverse, and ending the montage with revealing what Cecilia whispered in his ear years ago right before he is pulled away by the police. The shots in this scene were specifically chosen to create a both painful and beautiful yearning of the past for Robbie. The first few scenes in reverse followed by a bright, fantastical shot of him walking in a field of red flowers in his soldier’s uniform creates a wistful longing; though the visual tone of the shot in the field is the same as the first few scenes, the soldier’s uniform sticks out distinctively to show that years have passed and he is a different person now. A further layer of emotion, the heartache and helpless desire for Cecilia, is added to the wistful longing to go back to the past in the next few scenes of characters on screen kissing and Cecilia is standing in front of the Tallis mansion surrounded by red, white, and blue smoke, which was not in the original scene but added by Robbie in his dream.
Although editing is often referred to as an “invisible art,” the editing is noticeable in this montage due to the uncommon techniques employed as well as the inclusion of scenes that were not flashbacks, the soldiers singing and Robbie walking in a field of red flowers. Similar to the way sound is used, the editing here also takes the audience out of the multi-layered narration within the story to its outer-most layer, the film itself. The editing draws attention to the film as an art form, highlighting film editing, “the only art that is unique to cinema,” to visually bring out details and emotions of characters, and, more importantly, force the audience to take notice of the fantasy playing out in Robbie’s head in comparison to his blaring reality of waiting to be evacuated on the beaches of Dunkirk in the middle of a world war. A montage, a sequence of different scenes and images, is not only a direct opposite of the way humans experience the world in a never-ending stream of visual images, but like the previously discussed tracking shot of Dunkirk, it is literally a dream, or a fanciful desire, in this instance.
Finally, right before the last scene, Briony, now in her eighties, has just revealed that she saw no satisfaction in the truthful ending of what happened to Robbie and Cecilia—instead, she claims she “gave them their happiness” in her book. Then, the scene cuts to Robbie and Cecilia playing by the beach that they had dreamed about going to after the war. By now, the audience realizes that the entire story was written by Briony, and that there was no happy ending to the story of Robbie and Cecilia. So, the choice to end the movie with this fictional scene of them together, happy, is quite bittersweet. The multiple layers of fantasy and reality—the reality of the story, Briony’s narration when revealed as the author of the story, and the film’s own narration of this story within a story—are all witnessed and felt within this last scene of the movie.
Works Referenced:
“Film Editing.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Dec. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_editing.
Grushin, Olga. Forty Rooms. G.P. Putnams Sons, 2016.
Sharf, Zack. “Before Christopher Nolan, 'Atonement' Captured Dunkirk in One Powerful Long Take - Watch.” IndieWire, 20 July 2017, https://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/christopher-nolan-dunkirk-atonement-joe-wright-james-mcavoy-long-take-1201857569/.
Watts, Catrin. “Blurred Lines: The Use of Diegetic and Nondiegetic Sound in Atonement (2007).” Music and the Moving Image, vol. 11, no. 2, 2018, p. 23., doi:10.5406/musimoviimag.11.2.0023.
Wilson, Flannery. “The Ethics of Storytelling.” Medium, Medium, 8 Dec. 2017, https://medium.com/@fwils001/would-you-read-your-own-life-story-bf090356dbe1.
Wright, Joe, director. Atonement. Focus Features, 2007.
Cover Photo by Laura Loveday. Edited by Katrina Kwok.
