For as much as I liked the movie, parts of Atonement seemed quite boring to me. I don't know why, but I seem to hold a different standard to movies in terms of how I react to "slow movement" of a plot than I do with books. It is quite weird for me actually because I recognize that I have this high opinion about my taste in films but I seem to dislike "Part 2" of the film entirely because of its close attention to detail that forces the plot to retard. I say that that I find this to be somewhat of a difference in standards because it was for this exact reason that I loved certain parts of the novel. Perhaps though it was this disparity in where the choices were made to change paces, especially between the Director and Author, that seems to be annoying me. Sure... We'll go with that. But really though, when I think more about it, it seems that the choice to highlight certain areas of the plot by going into greater detail almost says something completely different when you decide to change it from the original. At the very least, it shows what the creative force behind these decision wants the audience to take away, and in the case of the movie I disagree with Wright. As you'll come to understand as I have, the decision to change the pacing of the original novel when adapting it to film was based on superficial motives. The guy wanted to make money.
In the Novel:
One of the most likable qualities of McEwan's writing is without a doubt the expressive quality of his language and how he is able to use this to great effect in delving into great detail. The first example that comes to mind has to be his descriptions of the sex scene from Robbie's point of view. The scene remain forever one of the greatest descriptions of sex from 20th-century fiction - at least that's what they tell me. I can certainly say I enjoyed it, and not for unstably-hormonal reasons, but rather for the intimately beautiful way he describes the moment; there are at least 3 pages of detail used in creating as realistically passionate a moment as I could ever hope to sext. Joking aside though, it really was beautiful, but this level of detail wasn't specific to only Chapter 11 in the novel. It was when I was made to prepare for a seminar with discussion questions that I was asked to answer "How does the careful attention to detail affect the pace of Part 1?" This question opened my eyes to the striking differences between the pacing of this entire first part and everything else thereafter. Why I appreciated this so much is that, in itself, the change of pace says something about Briony as a character, and her maturity through the years. While it might seem counter-intuitive to say that her younger-self's attention to detail is a sign of immaturity, this is entirely the reason it was so slow. As a writer who clearly struggles with keeping things "short and sweet" - "Keep It Simple, Stupid; KISS it - I can vouch for the younger Briony that we use overly complicated language in an attempt to mask the insecurities of unfocused writing. "Vigorous writing is concise." Is how William Strunk, Jr. puts it, and I couldn't agree more. The fact that McEwan is able to show this to me as a reader is fascinating to me and I applaud his artistic use of pacing.
In the Movie:
Now for the conspiracy theory: why the decision to change the pacing to something different from the novel shows that Joe Wright is driven by superficial motives. Someone call the National Inquirer... So, in looking at it objectively, you have to ask yourself what does it mean to go into "greater detail", or to have give "careful attention to detail", between the two different mediums?
Well, in a novel you're required to spend more time discussing it; or rather, you use more words. So why might this be undesirable? Well as Rick Riordan put it: For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book." Despite this, McEwan insists on using advanced language in order to maintain his level of detail. For him, inaccessibility is unimportant; the art is crucial.
In a movie, however, how do you show you are going into greater detail about anything? Really, it's just a matter of time: the longer you spend on something compared to another, the more important this thing seems to the audience; everything is contextual when you have X minutes in a movie. For instance, if I was making a movie and decided to spend 120 seconds on a single shot of a flower blowing in the wind, it is heavy implied that this flower is important - "it's totally symbolic for the frailty of the democratic system in a corporate-run aristocracy, man. Give Peace a chance." This concept applies to pacing as well. If you spend 80% of the movie discussing one thing, the remaining 20% is much harder to remember and obviously less important. This is the case for Wright's adaptation of Atonement, he decides to spend much more time than the book does in specifically focusing on the war element of the book while almost completely ignoring the conflicts of Briony's life and atonement. The frustrations I discussed having were initially brought to a head when watching the film and now seem to make sense of this inner hypocrisy I struggled with. Because I loved the level of detail McEwan put into his first part, to find Wright glaze over it in a matter of 20 minutes (the vase, for instance, appearing in the movie for 2 minutes, if that) was very frustrating when you know he spent 5 minutes of film on a continuous shot on the beach. I do understand and acknowledge the brilliance of the shot, don't get me wrong, but when you do look at it objectively it's quite clear why this topic is the main focus. The theme of "romance in the time of warfare", and "the horrors of mankind in wartime" is way more marketable to the masses. If you're looking to make a '$', people are going to pay to watch soft-core library porn with everyone's favourite Keira Knightley and the love story that ensues (oh, and some explosions while you're at it!) way before they're going to pay to watch a 77-year-old go into detail about her life after watching the production of her childhood play or a 13-year-old's struggles with the life of a playwright.
Thankfully for Wright, going into detail with a movie doesn't require "pages of extraneous detail", because in order to make the most money off of a movie you have to attract the "everyman", and I don't think it's a stretch to consider the everyman as that far off from a kid when looking to keep their attention. It's a shame that he had to sacrifice some of the artistic merit of the novel in order to do this but as far as I'm concerned he still felt the consequences. No Country for Old Men is 122 minutes of artistic brilliance, and the Coen brothers didn't sacrifice an ounce of pace to earn their Oscar.
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