Atonement liteA post-modern author can’t cope with remorse and expiation, as the novel Atonement and the subsequent film show all so clearly. Schadenfreude is a miserable little vice; let me make that
clear. Having got that off my chest, I now confess to having experienced it
when I learnt that the film Atonement
had not won any important Oscars in this year’s awards ceremony. The Oscars
occasion is a vulgar carnival and it has been known to miss classic films (such
as Some Like It Hot), but this year
it got it right. Atonement, as one
reviewer put it quite correctly, is “melodrama by numbers”; and the book-of-the-film,
lacking the cinematic advantage of the sultry, pouting presence of Keira
Knightley, is strictly for the airport lounge. Atonement is a heavyweight theme
and in struggling to attack it Ian McEwan is punching well above his
imaginative capacity.
These thoughts were in my mind on a long car journey recently, listening to a tape cassette of Alec Guinness reading his autobiography of his early life, Blessings in Disguise. Here was one of our greatest actors describing in his diffident, almost expressionless voice, the luck and the talent that propelled him towards his art. Like the poet Keats, acting for Guinness was a matter of negative capability: the sensitivity to sink his own personality into a role and then electrify audiences with the character thus created. One of his most memorable performances was as Major Jock Sinclair in the film Tunes of Glory. Directed by Ronald Neame (who also directed Brief Encounter), it is the story of how one man, Sinclair, sets out to destroy another - his commanding officer, Colonel Basil Barrow, played by John Mills. It is an absorbing drama of jealousy, rivalry and passionate loyalty to a battalion and it culminates in the Colonel shooting himself in despair. Suddenly and too late, Sinclair realises the horror of what he has done. He is brash, profane, a drinker, nonetheless Guinness manages to convey the full agony of the Major’s remorse. He knows that what has happened is murder rather than suicide and that he is to blame. What atonement can he make for his crime? The final scene of the film played itself over in my mind as I drove up the M1 listening to Guinness’s toneless voice. Sinclair, stricken by his conscience, decides that all that is left to him is to honour his enemy in death even as he dishonoured him in life. In a futile attempt to make amends he dreams up plans for a funeral fit for a field marshal, with all the pomp and ceremony – the tunes of glory - that the battalion can muster. The audience watches his contorted features and listens to his strangulated words as Sinclair/Guinness bares his soul; easily one of his finest performances. Guinness was a convert. In a charming vignette in his autobiography he says this came about when he was playing Chesterton’s Father Brown, filmed in France in 1954. In the lunch hour, wandering down the village street and still wearing his soutane, he was met by a small boy who, assuming he was a priest, took his hand and chattered away to him in incomprehensible French. Guinness reflected that a Church which inspired such trust in the young must be worth knowing. Tunes of Glory was not made until 1960, so one can speculate that he brought a heightened Catholic awareness of remorse and expiation to his imaginative interpretation of the role he played. One might further speculate that to attempt the subject of atonement at all, a novelist needs to be homo naturaliter religiosus. McEwan, clever, fluent, postmodern to his fingertips, lacks the inner resources for such a theme. Perhaps he should watch this minor classic – and recognise he is a bantam-weight at best. Francis Phillips writes from Bucks, in the UK.
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Dr Susan Reibel Moore said...A fine article, which makes everyone who hasn’t seen Tunes of Glory feel what we’ve missed.
Although McEwan’s Atonement has some fine moments, it is deeply flawed. Phillips is right about the author being over his head. The film unwittingly exposes inadequacies of vision in the novel. Other less ambitious fiction of his is more successful within the obvious limits of his world view.
Australia | Saturday, 7 June 2008 at 3:34 pm
Hartwig said...Francis,
that was great! Esp. the anecdote with Guinness and the French boy. Wunderbar. I will look out for The Tunes of Glory now.
Your
Hartwig
Germany | Sunday, 8 June 2008 at 8:19 pm
Kathleen Burkhalter Bell said...Hello Francis!
I’m looking for your email address...can you send it to me?
Cheers!
Kathleen
of The Cheerful Cherub
-- | Friday, 20 June 2008 at 12:56 am
mj anderson said...While McEwan’s SATURDAY was passable--just--I agree that Atonement flew wide of the mark. Thank you for an insightful review.
I’d heard the French Boy and Guinness anecdote somewhere, but it remains moving. God nudges us in ways we do not see until after the fact. “Charming” is a term not often applied to God, but this anecdote is surely that.
-- | Friday, 20 June 2008 at 8:07 am
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