Stupendous Adaptation

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2007)

Having read and studied the novel a couple of times, I was curious, but also nervous about what I might encounter on the screen. I found the adaptation stupendous; it was clever, artistic, and complex. Rather than adapt the exact story, word for word, plot for plot, Ian MacEwen and Christopher Hampton astutely wrote a self-reflexive film that draws attention to its own fabrication. Just like the novel is formed by fragments of truth, history, and fiction, the film is a compilation of shots that continually reminds the audience that this is an adaptation. For example, the film reels in the background of scenes, the close-ups of eyes, the windows as barriers, the shutting doors: all these symbols serve to accentuate the film's positioning of the viewer as voyeur and to highlight the film's central conflict: misunderstood sight. This is, after all, not a love story, but a story about what we see and what we imagine.
The stunning cinematography contributes to the film's voyeuristic ideas  the movie performs the visual as the novel performs the linguistic. The scenes often move from light to dark, submerging characters in shadow. When colours are used, they stand-out as symbolic gestures (the luscious and exquisite green of Knighley's gown, or the vivid red X that keeps Briony's cape in place, but also marks her shame). So much of the tension in the film rests on the long glances shared by the characters, which reveal more than words. Hence why the resounding silences are effective, particularly in the library sex scene. The moment is hot in the book, but the adaptation is perhaps hotter. The decision to omit music and let the silence become the simple noise of tongues and breath makes this the most erotic and passionate sex scene I've seen on screen for years.
Moreover, the sound edits are synchronized with the visual, reminding the viewer that this is a story that is being created (the type writer noise) over and over again, which resounds in the refrain, "come back to me". Again, this isn't a love story  the refrain appears, on the surface, as the loving words of C whispered in Robbie's ears; however, below the literal reading, the haunting echo suggests the switches from present to past, from past to present. The layers produced by the movement from truth to fiction, present to past, hope and loss, is best illustrated in Briony's scene with the French solider. As she removes the bandage on his head, she metaphorically strips the rhetorical layers of the narrative. The story is too tight and her guilt must unravel. In addition, the solider lacks the portion of his lobe that allows him to differentiate between real and unreal; if at this point in the film, the audience hasn't clued in to the fictional fabrication undertone of the plot, it has done the movie a great injustice.