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ATONEMENT

Last night I watched Joe Wright's multi-award winning film, Atonement, starring Keira Knightly, James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan - amongst others. It's an astonishing film, I think. Beautifully shot, brilliantly acted - and the key tropes are very delicately handled. I must admit to not having read McEwan's novel on which the film is based - though I do have a copy - and will be heading straight to page one as soon as I can. The core 'message' of the film must, I imagine, belong to the novel, and not Christopher Hampton's fantastic script. And that is, that fiction - story-telling - can 'atone', can put things 'right' in some way. This idea has been with me all morning, and if ever I needed as a writer to have some kind of assurance as to why the hell I do what I do at all, there it is in McEwan's tale.

He is reading at the forthcoming Oxford Literary Festival:

http://www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com/

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 12, 2010 at 11:43 AM

    Ooh, ooh, ooh! Another notch for the bow :) Keep them coming!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JAKI MCCARRICKMarch 12, 2010 at 1:28 PM

    Barbara, you'd love this film. When it won all the awards I was very blase about it but its really very moving and quite dark. I love the story and Saoirse Ronan is stunning as Bryony Tallis.

    ReplyDelete

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