"It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy" (35).

In returning once again to Briony's failed play and the reasons for its failure - the incompetence of the twins, Lola's stealing of the role of Arabella, and the inadequacy of the props and available materials - one can conclude that the ultimate reason for the failure of the story was that Briony simply used the wrong form. As Briony states in arriving at this realization:

"In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world; in a play you had to make do with what was available: no horses, no village streets, no seaside. No curtain. It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to the reader's" (35). 

Keeping this in mind, one cannot help but wonder how Atonement, a novel that is so much about the complexities of the perceptions of individual human minds, has been adapted into a rather successful major motion picture as a film is really nothing more than a large-scale version of a play. There are the same limitations as in Briony's play: the competence of the actors and actresses and also monetary budget restrictions that impact the quality of props, supporting characters, and scene settings. Throughout this process, there are many, many opportunities for failure. Just as in The Trials of Arabella, any number of factors could "ruin" the film for either the director or Ian McEwan, as he took a large role in the production of the film. The looming threat of failure is ever-present in the making of a film and there are so many factors that contribute to the overall project that one person doesn't really have any control over it whatsoever. This is indubitably threatening to Briony's overwhelming need for order and control, thus why she finds novels more suiting. It has been said that  through the character of Briony, McEwan reveals his own views on the nature of writing. In a 2002 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle McEwan mentioned that his views on novel writing vs. play (screenplay) writing to be very similar to those held by Briony:

Q. How do you compare the artistic satisfaction of writing a screenplay to writing a novel?

A. It's hard to take screenplay writing as seriously as novel writing. You're not God, you're not even a demigod, you're not even a cherub (3). 

(Article Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/10/RV51718.DTL) 

In this interview McEwan addresses something that is often referenced by Briony's character - her role in writing novel, as God. This is essential to Briony and it seems, by this quote, to be of some importance to McEwan as well. So the question remains, how does a novel that outright condemns all forms of plays go on to become a successful major motion picture? I suppose the grand Hollywood budget, nor the appearance of two big-name actors, Keira Knightly and James McAvoy, certainly didn't hurt the success of the film. Indeed, Atonement, had much more resources at its disposal than did Briony's little play. However, the film Atonement is not without its small failures - its inability, due to the very nature of plays, to convey the accurate emotions of the characters as well as its trimming and changing of certain elements in order to satisfy time constraints and overall aesthetics of the film. Despite these small and inevitable failures, however, the film Atonement is one of the more successful (in my opinion) adaptions from novel to film.



Wiegand, David. "Q&A with Ian McEwan: Getting Rid of the Ghosts." Editorial. San Francisco Chronicle 10 Mar. 2002: 1-3. SFGate. Web. 22 Nov. 2011. <(Article Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/10/RV51718.DTL)>.