Adaptation, (Re)writing and Predestination in Joe Wright's Atonement
Résumé
This chapter proposes an analysis of Joe Wright’s 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement. In particular it looks at how one of the novel’s major theme of storytelling and what Alistair Cormack calls ‘the ethics of fiction’ translates to the cinematic medium. How, it asks, is Briony’s problematic (re)writing of the past in Atonement conserved in the film and expressed in purely cinematic terms, focusing particularly on the use of intradiegetic sound, music, montage, camera movement and extended tracking shots. Special attention is paid to how questions of predestination and anticipation in the first part of the novel are rendered cinematically, as well as issues related to point of view, knowing and seeing. This chapter also considers whether the film successfully avoids the pitfalls of costume drama and the British heritage industry with an analysis of melodrama and nostalgia in the film. In this vein, the chapter focuses in particular on the way the film treats the novel’s rewriting of the national myths of Dunkirk and the home front.