I just finished rereading Atonement for the first time in 13 years. I've been calling it my favourite book and my favourite movie this whole time, and since I've been reading a lot more lately, I wanted to revisit and see if it's still the case. But it was kind of impossible to read without picturing the film the entire time.
Because for all the film adaptations of books that fail to capture or translate their story properly, Atonement is right there. Not only a perfectly faithful adaptation of the themes and events in the book, but actually one that elevates them.
An aesthetically sublime film in its own right... The score. The costumes. The scenery. The frenetic editing. The emotions. You can feel the heat of the summer day. Feel the chaos at Dunkirk. It's genuinely an artistic achievement. And it's one that stuck so incredibly close to its source material.
Yet there's one small change in particular that stands out to me because it's better than the book. And it's so small, but it is EVERYTHING.
When Briony comes to tell her sister that she's changing her testimony after all these years and Robbie yells at her for telling the lies that condemned him, in the book he says "and when I was inside (prison) did it give you pleasure?"
In the film, James McAvoy delivers this line with the words switched ever so slightly "Tell me, did it give you pleasure to think of me inside?" and he lingers over the word pleasure in a way that eroticizes the whole concept, in a way that reminds Briony and the audience that all this happened because Briony had a little scorned crush on him at 13. And puts the emphasis back on her imagination, imagining him inside, since this whole story is about her imagination. It's just.. that one line hits so much harder, both in the way it was written and in the way James McAvoy delivers it.
It's crazy. So many book to screen adaptations that fail and fall short and do a disservice to their source material... and then there's Atonement.
26 notes
·
View notes
We need more fanfiction of the following characters/celebs:
Dean Winchester x reader
Charles Xavier x reader
Erik Lehnsherr x reader
Robbie Turner x reader from Atonement
Beau Arlen x reader from Big Sky
Soldier boy x reader from The Boys
Wolverine x reader
James McAvoy x reader
Hugh Jackman x (daughter) reader
Michael Fassbender x reader
Tony Stark x reader, preferably daughter!reader
Clint Barton x reader
Avengers x reader, any Avenger at all really.
Gellert Grindelwald x reader (Johnny Depp)
Albus Dumbledore x reader (Jude Law)
Jack Dawson x reader, Titanic
Legolas x reader
Aragorn x reader
LOTR/Hobbit characters x reader
Castiel x reader
Charlie Hudson x reader from Hudson & Rex
Lord Asriel x reader from His Dark Materials
Nick Ryan x reader from McLeod's daughters
Richard O'Connell x reader from The Mummy movies
Wade Wilson aka Deadpool x reader
Richard Castle x reader from Castle
Drover (Hugh Jackman) x reader from Australia
Ronan Keating x reader
Christian x reader from Moulin Rouge
Aidan Turner x reader and his characters x reader
James Bond (Daniel Craig) x reader
Bucky Barnes x reader
Steve Rogers x reader
Obi-Wan Kenobi x reader
Ewan McGregor x reader
Anakin Skywalker x reader
Hayden Christensen x reader
Owen Grady x reader from Jurassic World
Bucky Barnes x reader
Sirius Black x reader
Cedric Diggory x reader
Draco Malfoy x reader
Indiana Jones x reader
Cillian Murphy x reader
Tommy Shelby x reader
Harry Goodman x reader from Pokemon Detective Pikachu
I'll add here more as I remember more characters/celebs. I prefer character x female reader. The ones in bold need more fanfiction.
183 notes
·
View notes