listening log 1-atonement

          Atonement 

   122 min; romance

This movie has awesome story line. And, I like the actor 'James McAvoy. He is very attractive actor. I have liked him since I saw him at the British drama "state of play." 

    This movie is about tangled love and how historical events effect individuals. There is story about 'atonement'. 

     In 1935, Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old girl from a rich family in England, had just finished writing a play. She wanted to practice this with her cousins but they just decided to go swimming. At that time, Briony showed a moment of sexual tension between her older sister, Cecilia and Robbie Turner, a servant's son. Unfortunately, Robbie was a man Briony felled in love with childish mind. Robbie wrote love letter for Cecilia and also wrote some erotic poem for just fun. He needed to prepare to go Tallis’s party so Robbie asked Briony to deliver his letter. However, he had a mistake that gave erotic poem to Briony.  She secretly read the letter and shocked about that.

    At that evening, Cecilia and Robbie met in the library and recognized their love of each other’s and made love. During the act, Briony watched that act through the opened door and mistakenly believed that Robbie was raping Cecilia. At dinner, the twin cousins have run away. Briony went out alone into the garden and was looking for them. However, she found that a man running away from her teenaged cousin Lola who was looked like raped. Lola said that she does not know her attacker, but Briony was sure that it was Robbie, and told her guess to everyone. Including the police, she claimed that she saw Robbie committed the act. Everyone believed her story – except for Cecilia. Robbie was arrested and sent to prison. 

    After Four years, Robbie was released from prison because of war and he joined the army. Before he leaved, he was reunited with Cecilia and promised to return. Briony became 18 years old; she had joined Nursing Corporation in London because she wanted to be useful role to the society. Later, Robbie, wounded and very ill, finally arrived at the beaches of Dunkirk. And then, Briony fully understood the impact of her lie so she visited Cecilia to apologize to her directly. Cecilia replied that she would never forgive her and Robbie confronted Briony. He demanded that she immediately told every truth to her family and reanalyzed the truth but Briony already knew who that person is. He was actually family friend Paul Marshall and he would not be implicated in a court of law because he had married Lola.

    However, decades later, Briony has an interview about her new novel, Atonement, which she has been working on for most of her adult life. Briony reveals that the book's ending is all fictional. In reality, Robbie actually died at Dunkirk while awaiting evacuation, and that Cecilia died a few months later as one of the flood victims in the tube station of the London Underground. So, Briony hopes that, by reuniting them and their life in her fiction, she can give them the happy conclusion to their lives that they always wanted to have. 

I think that this poster show well the main topic of this movie.