Atonement Essay

While a love story set amongst war is a commonplace plot in Hollywood, Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007) outshines most with its sense of realism in both romance and battle. Set just before World War II, the film chronicles the consequences Briony Tallis faces after making a wrongful accusation and sending her sister’s true love into war. Underneath the focus on forgiveness and attempts to compensate, Atonement introduces an interaction between knowledge and responsibility and how it contributes to the loss of innocence that continues throughout the film.
Despite the sense that cousins Briony and Lola are much older than they seem, their exposure to sexual violence at such young ages combined with their lack of understanding lead to their blind accusations. Briony

understands that the victim of the rape is Lola and she believes that Robbie committed the crime, despite knowing subconsciously that it was another. It is due to her childish heartbreak over Robbie that she accuses him as a villain and ultimately lands him in a warzone. This sudden subjection to the adult world causes everything she understands to fall apart. As time passes and she grows to understand more about what happened that day, she realizes her wrongs only to be quickly replaced with guilt as she attempts to atone for the unhappiness she caused. Briony’s character demonstrates how youth need guidance as they grow and if they do not receive help, they will make choices that they will regret later in life.
In contrast to Briony’s character, Robbie’s discovery of the horrors of war effectively cause him to shed his purity throughout the film.

Raised as a worker for the Tallis family, Robbie (James McAvoy) is portrayed as a gentle, loving man in the exposition of the film. While he is already in the adult world, he does not experience anything traumatic until he chooses to leave prison and enter the army. During his time serving in the military, he rapidly deteriorates into an easily angered, dejected man, except when around Briony’s sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley). His only grounding point seems to be when Cecilia requests for him to “Come back to [her]”, a statement repeated throughout the film. It is the exposure to the barbarity of battle and the frustration of separation that corrodes Robbie’s once innocent self. Atonement suggests that there are multiple ways for one to lose one’s innocence, and that age isn’t an influence. Even more so, the film seems to show that there is no way to regain innocence once it is lost, specifically because Robbie perishes in the war, never “[becoming] again the man who... made love to [Cecilia] in the library” and Briony never gets to apologize for her

mistakes.
“Come back to me” is a phrase used in a sense of love, but can be seen to the viewer as tragic. Atonement proves that, once individuals lose their innocence, they can never return to who they once were. Characters such as Robbie and Briony can never ‘come back’ to their old self, not after the horrors and consequences they’ve faced.