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A little light does pierce the darkness, though. Roughly halfway through the tracking shot, the camera comes to a gazebo where several troops have gathered to sing a hymn; we circle them and then, just as we leave, we hear them sing the words "the still small voice of God." Moments later, as the tracking shot comes to an end some distance away, the camera turns back to the gazebo, and those words are once again just barely audible on the soundtrack. In the midst of the chaos and despair of war, the film dwells on this note of hoped-for grace—a note that may be echoed in a later scene, where Briony goes about her business while Debussy's Claire de Lune plays over the soundtrack, in stark contrast to the film's usually frenetic score.

Romola Garai as the older Briony

It is difficult to say much more without giving away important plot points. But suffice it to say that the film, written by Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) and directed by Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice), is full of images and bits of dialogue that echo one another in interesting ways; immersion in water is a recurring motif, and an upper-class man's glib reference to the "war wound" he got while fighting off a child—just a nick on his cheek, really—stands in stark contrast to the actual war wound that the lower-class Robbie has when we catch up with him in France.

The film also raises important questions about the relationship between honesty and kindness, between truth and grace, between memory and wishful thinking, and it ends on a surprisingly powerful note that asks whether there can ever be true mercy without, well, truth. Can one find redemption in a lie, if it is told with kindness?

In thinking about this film, my mind often goes back to Snow Falling on Cedars. Both films move back and forth in time, both films feature young lovers interrupted in a moment of passion, and both films amplify questions of personal, social and even cosmic injustice by dragging their characters into the Second World War.

But where Snow Falling on Cedarswas about bearing your scars and letting go of the past, Atonement seems to be about people who cannot let go of the past, and are indeed haunted by the past and their knowledge that it can never be undone. Briony, in particular, is searching for grace and forgiveness, and the fact that she can't quite find it makes Atonementone of the more devastating films in recent memory.

Talk About It

1. Have you done things that you deeply regretted and wished you could undo, especially because of how they affected other people? How have you dealt with it? Is it easier to deal with if the error was committed while you were a child?
2. When Robbie meets Cecilia in London, he says he doesn't know if they can have a relationship based on "a few moments" that took place a few years before. How would you deal with this situation? Does his dilemma tell us anything about sexual relationships and how they should be approached?
3. What does the film indicate about class prejudices? Would everyone have believed Briony's accusation if Robbie had not come from the servant class? Have class differences affected your own attitude towards other people? Have you ever tried to fit in with other groups of people the way Robbie does (note his accent)? How?
4. What does the film say about the relationship between truth and mercy? How do you think God embodies both of these things?
5. Why is it important that Briony not reveal her first name to the soldiers that she comforts? Why does she reveal it to a wounded soldier just before he dies? How does this tie into the movie's themes of forgiveness, hope, truth, and mercy?

The Family Corner

Atonement is rated R for disturbing war images (a field of dead children, horses being shot, a man checks the wound in his chest), language (most of it f-words used by the soldiers in Dunkirk, though another, arguably worse four-letter word is seen in tight close-up as it is spelled out on a typewriter), and some sexuality (a man and woman are about to have sex against a bookshelf, but their clothes stay on; a woman dives into the water in her underwear and is somewhat exposed afterwards; a sexual predator's rear end is briefly illuminated by a flashlight in the middle of the night)

Photos © Copyright Focus Features

© Peter T. Chattaway subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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