Speaker 1: We're Tom and Lebrend and this is the Bitter Kitten
Movie Club. Hellicans. Welcome back to another edition of the
b k MC, a supplemental edition of the PSO Podcast
where we take a look at one movie per week,
unpack it, and talk the hell out of it. This
week's movie is a director Joe Wright's Atonement from two
thousand and seven, starring Kieren Knightley and James McAboy and
a whole slew of up and coming British and Irish
stars like Cir Saronan and Juno Temple and be A c.
Cumber Batch.
Speaker 2: I had completely forgotten about this movie. The only thing
I remember when we talked about it, it was like,
all right, the dress. I remember the dress, and which
we will talk about. But my point is that I
completely forgot all these people in the movie. My god,
I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, and they're all young. Maybe it's because I wrote
that piece about the dress, but most of it was
still pretty fresh in my heart.
Speaker 2: I completely forgot about everybody. I mean everybody. You named
Sir Sharonan like a baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a baby in this all right. Let me
ask you this because there was you know, I'm watching
this film, and I honestly don't know how many times
I've seen it. I don't think I've seen it more
than maybe three times. It's not like some obsessive watch
of mine. But I could not place myself in the
mindset of a first time viewer. So I'm I don't know.
Do you think the twist at the end is surprising?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: It is? Oh, okay, I can't tell. I've seen it,
so I know it, and I think is it?
Speaker 2: I think there are clever things and we'll talk them
all right, Okay, but first of all, we have to
remember that it's based on a book. So when yes,
when something like any movie based on a book, they
have to sort of follow the book.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I adapt it.
Speaker 2: Yes. My point is that it does feel like a
book every now and then I see that, and you know,
but it's I think it's a great story. I do too,
beautifully done, I think, And it's one of those movies
I'm watching it. I'm like, man, those British people.
Speaker 1: They really know their shit. Now, well, here's the thing.
It's and this is one of the things that I
do actually really like about the film is that it,
in terms of its themes and setting and the milieu.
It couldn't be more English. Oh, it starts in an English
country house with spoiled, snobby people, and then it's World
War two, and then it's like, you know, London during
the war and nurses and soldiers and Dunkirk and overwriting
the entire thing as secrets and sexual repression and scammed. Well,
so on some level it is a quintessentially English sort
of story. And what I really like about the film
and what Joe Wright has done is the way it
avoids lingering too long on any of that. I mean,
I do think it spends too much time at don Kirk,
and we'll get into that, but the scenes on the
estate in the beginning of the film are so subtle.
And I just want to note that this movie, it's
two thousand and seven. It comes out at almost a
perfect halfway point between Robert Altman's Gosford Park, which came
out in two thousand and one with Maggie Smith, and
Downton Abbey, which came out in two thousand and nine
or twenty ten. It's in that period where there was
just a lot of movies and TV shows about English
country houses and the problem with those stories is that
they all unpack relatively the same themes over and over
and over again. In fact, that's why there have been
so many Downton Abbey parodies in the last couple of years,
is because we've all seen these fucking stories, right. And
what I like is that Wright is he doesn't linger
on any of those cliches. He doesn't make them the
point of the story, but he lets some sort of
color the story. I'm going to talk about a specific scene.
It's just where Kiera Knightley and her brother are on
that like barge on the on the lake with a
diving board with Benedict Comber.
Speaker 2: Badge looking incredible. Who Benedett, Yes, god, so young and
well he's so young, yeah, and handsome. She looks, Oh
my god, everybody everybody looks.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they're all doing banter, and she actually does
say at one point that she's not friendly with James
McAvoy's character anymore because we don't run in the same crowds.
And then at another point, Kira and her brother, I
don't know the brother's name, maybe Leon, right, Bennedict Cumber
batches speaking and the two of them exchange looks and
Benedict Cumberbatch catches it, and nothing is made of this.
In fact, Benedict Cumberbatch is largely the villain of one
of the villains of the piece by the end of
the film. But it just sort of underlines these people
are fucking snobs, even to people of their own because
Benedict was you know, he was wealthy. He was the
one with the money. Yeah, he was the son of
a manufacturer or whatever chocolate. But that family is so
those country house families, Like they all put on their
tiaras and they're out in the middle of the like,
it's so snobby. And I love that the that right
did not shy away from that, showing you know, these
people are all snobs, but not lingering on it too much,
because the other aspect of the story is that James
McAvoy is a servant's son who is you know, invited
to dinner and allowed to walk through the front door,
but as soon as someone says something bad about him,
they all turn on him immediately, and so there's classism.
Can't get more English than a story about classism and snobbery.
But again, it does not linger too much on that.
It does not have people talking about that constantly. He
only mentions it near the end of the film.
Speaker 2: I think everything is very subtle.
Speaker 1: That's the point. I'm trying to make you figure.
Speaker 2: Things out as the viewer. But you know, he's just
a He's just a line here and there. But it
didn't just set up is interesting. The house is goings stunning,
the costumes are beautiful, and everybody's really, really, really good.
Speaker 1: There's not a single person that's bad in this. I
will say that Harriet Walter, who plays the mother, is
kind of wasted in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't see much Juno Temple. My god, I
was like, what baby, I know, and I'm like, what
are you doing there? I forgot you. Yeah, everybody everybody
was great.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But like Juno Temple's storyline, again, there's a lot
of subtlety in how that is presented. Is she a
young girl who lied about who her rapist was? Or
is she a young girl who got caught having sex
with someone she shouldn't have and let that story because
I think the film I was watching the wedding scene
and I don't know, are you supposed to believe this tragic?
She wound up marrying her rapist? And I or is
she just a villain who just lied about being caught
with an older man and wound up marrying him again subtlety.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not very clear if she just went with
the story.
Speaker 1: Is she a tragic character or is she a bit
That's really what it comes down to, and you don't know.
The film does not really tell you either way. Although yeah,
I mean she's still about her rape. I mean she's
still you know, if Bennett Cumberbatch had raped her, why
wouldn't she tell the truth about that? So I guess
it comes down on the side of villainy. And that's
a little dicey is when you make a rape a
rape lie the center of your story, because you know,
it gets into old tropes.
Speaker 2: About complicated you know, maybe at you have to take
to understand that at the time, maybe she was kind
of forced to marry him or who do you don't know.
Speaker 1: It's the film exactly. The film does not come down
hard on any of this. It's it's a really interesting
approach because and I guess that's the point is that
the ambiguity is supposed to be what fuels the story.
The other thing I think about him, his directing and
the writing of the film, which is very smart. And
Ian McEwan, who wrote the book, is one of the
co writers of the film, so that it has something
to do with it. The way the film plays with time,
it'll show you a scene and then it'll go back
and show you the seen from a slightly different perspective
or angle or like that. I always like that. Well,
the thing is, the story is relatively straightforward. If you
were to tell it in a chronological manner, if you
were to not be ambiguous about what you were trying
to say, then you would have a very straightforward story.
But it probably wouldn't be very interesting. In fact, you
would you wouldn't have that twist at the end. It
would just all play out normally. So in order to
make the story more interesting, you have to have that
sort of playing around with the time to the timeline.
There is a question hanging over the film that I
would love to get into, but I think that's going
to be after our first break. Let's talk about the
production design. We will talk about the dress the production design.
First off, that house which I was shocked to find
out that house was only built in the late nineteenth century.
I would have thought it was built like a sixteen.
What I want to point out is that, uh, there's
some there's a lot of themes and visual motifs in
the film. One of them is water. We see her
diving into that pond, or we see her diving into
that fountain. They're on that lake, they're on the beach
at Dunkirk, and of course she drowns at the end
of the film. Well, I mean, oh yeah, I mean
I don't feel like I need to do spoil our
alerts for this podcast, you know, and and once you
know that, you can look for them, and it's it's
an artful way of using that. And and similarly, I
think it's a bit of a subtle foreshadowing is that,
you know, James McAvoy is sitting in his his like
bedroom or whatever and whatever shack his mother lives in,
and he's looking over a skylight and a bomber flies
over her head. And again I feel like that's a
subtle absolute. Another subtle point is that that scene on
an incredibly romantic scene where she gets on the bus
and they're parted, and she's in her nurse's uniform and
he's in his soldier's uniform. It could not be anywhere English.
And the bus is going to the station where she
eventually dies, it's on the back of the bus. Yeah. Yeah,
there's all of that. And the other thing that I
want to point out, which I love, is all of
the floral motifs in the film, and I don't know
that they have anything more to do with it except
that argument that she has with Robbie with the vase
by the fountain is what initiates everything. It all starts
in that moment, and everything falls apart after that moment,
and it's all about those flowers. And so if you
go into the house, that house is choking with flowers,
every upholstered item, every pillow, every wallpapery, curtain, and sometimes
like that children's playroom that they're in, there's like six
different florals going on in that room. Now, that's pretty
much of the time of the period of the style
for that kind of house. But I you know, production
design choices are choices, and I felt like this was
a visual motif that was tying that moment, that moment
at the fountain with the rest of the story, right,
the whole thing, the vase and all.
Speaker 2: Pause because it's you know, it's not very clear why
you think that's so important, because she makes the point
that it's one of our most valuable Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think the vase itself actually means anything.
I think she was using as an excuse to go outside,
like she wanted to see him. If you want to
fill up a vase, why would you carry it all
the way outside to it. I order she wanted to
see him. You know. It's those two were hot for
each other, crazy, crazy hot for each other. And I'm assuming,
because again the doesn't spell these things out, that class
issues were keeping them apart. She was clearly a snob.
I mean, she was very clearly a snob. She even
thought Benedict Cumberbatch's character was beneath her, So how was
she going to date the cooks, you know, son or whatever.
Speaker 2: But the whole water thing is interesting because there's also
sircial Ronan's character. She jumps into water too.
Speaker 1: Again, that's yeah, that's another example, and they show that,
they show them underwater like that, and then they show
Kara Knightley at the end floating in that tube station underwater.
I think all of that is rather artfully done.
Speaker 2: I think the I think the movie did a very
good job if you're watch him for the first time
not really knowing what's going on and what's real and
was what's not real? And I thought that was very clever. Yeah,
but you only find out that towards the end, when
when you're actually talking to old Sircier Ronan's character.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a short break. I'm gonna unpack that.
When we come back, we'll be right back picking up.
We're back picking up on your last point, Lorenzo. I
thought it was interesting again because I could not put
myself in the place of someone who didn't know where
the story was going. And it'll be interesting if any
of you listening had did watch this for the first time.
I would really be interested in hearing your thoughts on this,
because I felt like kind of by the time you
got to Dunkirk. And I do think that scene went
on too long. It's one of the few criticisms I
have of the film is that the World War two
France scenes just went on too long. And I actually
might have wanted a little bit more of Briany at
the hospital and all that, or even Cecilia at the hospital.
Karen Knightley's character. But by the time you get to
Dunkirk and they're wandering that beach and my god, that
scene did go on long. It's an impressively shot scene,
but it did go on along. You're starting to get
the sense of this is not going to be a romance,
like there's not to be a happy ending here. You
sort of get that sense. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I again, if you haven't read the book, if
you watching the movie for the first time, you kind
of you want them to be together.
Speaker 1: Of course, wonderful together. You want them to.
Speaker 2: Get together at some point, but you don't know if
that's going to happen, if one of them is going
to die. I mean, you keep wondering the whole time.
And I think the movie does a very good job.
And I don't know. Again, I haven't read the book.
Maybe the book has a like a whole chapter about
the you know, him going to war, But.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately it's whether it works as in the
film or not. I thought it was.
Speaker 2: I thought it was interesting too, to give you some
perspective of what was going on at the time. I
think that's watching those scenes, I'm like, oh, holy shit, man.
Speaker 1: I do think it's very good at reminding you. Yes, yes,
you know, World War two was brutal as ship. It
was incredibly.
Speaker 2: Broaching watching those scenes. What came to my mind was like, Wow,
you were in the pretty house and all of a sudden,
now you're you're taking care of dead bodies, you know,
because that's the reality of what happened. Right, So I
think the movie does a good job.
Speaker 1: I actually really I know, apparently the scene with Briany
and the French soldier with the head wound in the hospital,
uh huh. The director had to fight to get that
in because, like you know, the the studio didn't think
there was a need for that scene, and maybe there
isn't a need for that scene, but I really did
think it was you know it. I think it's a
necessary overall theme about the brutality of those years and
what it did to the English people.
Speaker 2: And also what she put Robbie through, you know. Yes, yeah,
I think that's a good point because she's she's looking
at what what what happened to those people? Yeah, and
because of what she did, he's in that position. Now.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the dress, and then we're
going to jump into talking about Briany, because that's my
overriding question here. Is Briany a villain or is she
just a girl who made a terrible mistake?
Speaker 2: Don't get into that later. The dress, The dress, My god.
Speaker 1: I have written a lot about this dress. We wrote
a piece on it like six years ago on our site,
going to link to it. I don't have much more
to say that hasn't been said in that piece, but
I will point out Jacqueline Duran is the costume designer,
and it's one of the few dresses on that has
its own Wikipedia entry. There's only about ten dresses.
Speaker 2: It's insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's fair to say it's one of
the most iconic gowns cinematic gowns of the twenty first century,
but I definitely I would also place it as one
of the most iconic gowns in cinema history period. One
of the things that stands out about that gown is
you might not realize it because it feels so perfectly
of the moment, it's actually not. There's a lot about
that gown that no one in nineteen thirty five would
have broughtn has spaghetti straps, and that was not a
thing in nineteen thirty five. There's a laser cut lace
in the bodice, and obviously that wasn't a thing in
nineteen thirty five. The way it's gathered on the front
and everything, even the shape of the skirt, the shape
of the skirt is extremely full for nineteen thirty If
you think of like gowns, like silk bias cut gowns
in nineteen thirty five, you're looking at like Carol Lombard
and Jean Harlow and those screen sirens, and those gowns
were sleek. I mean, Jean Harlowe famously, I'm gonna give
you a little bit of she had a shave or
bush because she couldn't wear she had to be naked
under those gowns, and they were so clingy that she
had to, you know, keep herself hair free down there.
That's how clingy those gowns were. Because of her Fabri
has a lot of drape and flow. When she walks
out of the front door and it is just billowing
around her. It's really not nineteen thirty five, but it's
a stunner the go it is. I mean, I mean,
she never looked more beautiful on film. My god, just
never ever total supermodel. In that moment, they don't even think.
I mean, obviously Karen Knightley's beautiful, but in that moment,
it's like, holy cow, I think cinematic professions.
Speaker 2: She's a beautiful woman, but she's not like gorgeous, drop
dead like well people expect of, you know, that type
of beauty. But in that moment, in that moment, Johnny,
that shade of green is just perfection everything about everything
about it.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get into symbolism, like that
green it evokes all of the grasses and wildlife that's
around her. But green also has a has a an
underlying implication of poison and also magic. So it's kind
of all bound up in in that color is that
there's the natural world, there is the magic of her,
just a vision of her right and the fact that
you know her life and his life are ruined after
she wears that gown. And one of the things I
pointed out when we wrote about that gown is anytime
you see someone pickin item, pick something out of a
closet and get dressed on camera, there's a reason for that.
They want you to look at that outfit. They want
you to understand that that outfit has meaning. Think of
every makeover sen you ever saw that. There's a reason
you're shown her choosing and picking that dress. It's important.
And I also want to note I think the sex
scene is both very sexy and a little disturbing. And
it's sexy when you're in their perspective and when you
look at it from Briany's perspective. He does a very
good job of shooting that in a manner where you're like,
what the hell is going on there?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What like because a thirteen year old girl in nineteen
thirty five would not have.
Speaker 2: Known, right, I do think, well, she makes a point
that she was in love with him, so I think
there's also that there's a little bit of jealousy there
and why her and all that. I don't think she's
completely naive about the whole thing. I think she's a
child and misunderstood, you know, but you.
Speaker 1: Really think she didn't understand it was Bennetict Cumberbatch. No
until the wedding, because that's what it's implied.
Speaker 2: No, I know she knew, she knew it wasn't him.
Speaker 1: She did that.
Speaker 2: I think because she was pissed. She was annoyed as
a child, she was annoyed.
Speaker 1: I think there's a bit of that, But I don't
know how deliberate she was in nineteen thirty five, And
I think, if you want to get into it, I
don't think a thirteen year old girl in that setting,
in that time period, I don't think she should be
judged too harshly for making that kind of mistake, even
if it was caught up in her own feelings, in
her own sexual repression, which it clearly was. But my
take is everything she does after that, including right up
until Vanessa Redgrave at the end, uh, huh, villain, don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think she's a villain. I think she can't
deal with her guilt. I think, Okay, I think she
just can't. She can't come to terms with that, that
she's a reason why all that happened, you know. And
and and I think one of the uh, one of
the beautiful things about the movie, I think is that
if you haven't read the book, if you don't know anything,
you really believe that they got together. And that's a
I thought that was very clever.
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe I believed.
Speaker 2: And because you hate Brownie's character so much. I mean,
at least I did. I mean, I hated that girl
for doing what she did. Uh, you wanted a scene
because I hate when movies don't give you a scene
when the people get confronted by something. I absolutely hate that. No,
I need that, I need. So I think that's very
clever that we got that. We got him to confront
her and talk about, you know, well, that shitty thing
she did.
Speaker 1: And that was her choice to do it that way. Yes,
And to me, I think at the end of the film,
and I think a lot of this is in Red
Gregg's performance, because she's so good and she's so subtle.
I think there's a tremendous amount of delusion and shame
in that final choice. And I think when she's basically
appealing directly to the audience and saying I gave them that,
I gave them their happiness, and it's like, you, lying,
piece of shit. No, you didn't know. You didn't. You
wrote a happy ending so that your final book could
have a happy ending. If you were braver about it,
you would have put that in the book. But she didn't.
She waited until she was giving it her final interview
or whatever. And I thought that no.
Speaker 2: I thought that was weird that, like, Okay, you gave
a happy end in the book, but then you give
the interview.
Speaker 1: I think she I think she felt I don't know.
Actually that's actually a good point. I think I don't
know if she was ever planning on telling the truth,
or if that was an impulse she had for her
final interview because she was dying. I think it should
be pointed out it was a clever choice, but you
have to sort of bring yourself out of the film
for a second to deal with it was to have
her have this hairstyle in all three eras, which is
not how people live. And that was very specifically a
little girl's hairstyle in nineteen thirty five, and by the
time you get to Vanessa Redgrave in like two thousand
and seven or whatever, it looks ridiculous on her. And
that's the point, Like there was some It's one of
those examples that comes up when people criticize films for
giving a character the same hairstyle. But that woman was stuck.
She was stuck in nineteen thirty five and she never
moved past it. The guilt of that has literally crippled
her as a person. She is. She's broken at the end.
I think she's a really broken person. And I think
that is it's a multiple tragedy. It's like the tragedy
of Robbie and Cecilia and how they died and they
could never get together. But it's also the tragedy of Briany,
who just was a broken person for her entire life,
who never ever moved past this much. I think it's the.
Speaker 2: Movie's clever also, like when they she has the conversation
with the two main characters, Robbie and Cecilia about coming clean,
you know, and telling the whole story and tell them,
telling everybody the whole story. But she can't do that
anymore because Juno Temple's character Lula is right, right, right.
So I think that's brilliant because okay, did obviously obviously
that didn't happen, But did you at some point had
the conversation with somebody, you know, to compleat They.
Speaker 1: Don't tell you any of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't tell you any of that, and you
don't know, You really don't know what happened. The only
thing you know is that he went to Wars. She went.
She became a nurse to help and apparently they never met, right,
they never.
Speaker 1: I think you're supposed to believe that that scene, well,
I don't know. Yeah, Vanessa Redgrave at the end says,
I researched all the scenes that I was not present for.
I think the scene on the bus where they parted
ways happened. You must have happened, although I don't know
how Briany would have known about it unless there were letters. Right,
So I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's not clear.
Speaker 1: It's not clear.
Speaker 2: It's not clear everything, right, That's why the Maeter the
country house is up for interpretation. You don't know what happened.
That's why I love them. And I mean, maybe I'll
read the book to find out how it's done in
the book. I thought that was very clever because because
you kind of believe all that and then you find
out that that actually didn't happen, which makes things even sadder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, now that I think about it, that
scene of them saying goodbye when when she gets on
the bus, it's so overly romantic, and like I said,
it's such a cliche of English war films that it
probably didn't happen. No, it probably didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Didn't. I don't think they ever met again. You're probably right.
Speaker 1: Although there were letters, weren't there, And in fact, they
showed they showed his friend in Dunkirk taking the letters,
and I think that must have been maybe she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe he got letters but never saw her.
Speaker 1: Right, I think they yes. But my point is might
have indicated that they did. Oh you know what I mean,
like they might that's maybe she read the letters. Yeah,
maybe she read because she talked about the country cottage
by the sea, and that was a literal postcard on
top of that pile of letters, and she would have
had to have seen those letters at some point. Interesting.
It's a very thought provoking film.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a beautiful movie. I think it's
a beautiful movie. And yeah, it made me said a
couple of times, and actually it is. I was like,
this is really it's sad story, but very interesting, really
well done. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I did too
watching it again.
Speaker 1: So we will have a piece up on the site
today unpacking some of this stuff further, with lots of
pictures and that sort of thing. We'd love to hear
what you all thought of it, and we'll be back
next week. I'm sorry I didn't check the Bitter Kitten
roster for next week. I can't remember what next week's
film is, but we'll be back next week.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna get but it isn't Abett's face.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is by my favorite You're correct, it is
Babbett's face. Lorenzo's favorite film of all time. We did
Wings of Desire, which was my favorite film of all time. Yes,
all right, so we'll be back next week with Bibbett's face.
Until then, take care of yourself. Love you mean it.
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye