Spitball Army

There aren’t many perfect things in the world and, as soon as we begin to feel committed that something is approaching perfection, we start to notice flaws.  Then we realize that everything has flaws – that, indeed, nothing is perfect – and our definition of “perfect” gets a healthy loosening.

Thereafter, it is easier to come up with a list of perfect movies.  Casablanca.  Bonnie & Clyde.  Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Chinatown.  Singin’ in the Rain.  To Kill a Mockingbird.  Fanny & Alexander.  Sure, they all have little problems that we overlook (Gene Kelly can dance but can’t act, for instance, and I still don’t understand how F&A got into that trunk), but overall these and other films (like those on your own list) approach our notion of “ideal.”  This weekend, I saw a movie that made my list immediately: Atonement.

The story is dramatic and engaging, as the source material – Ian McEwan’s novel – is spellbinding literature.  Great cinematography.  Wonderful ensemble acting.  A World War II setting.  Vanessa Redgrave.  And, towering over all of the other masterful qualities of the film is its imaginative use of music.

The story of the film is a tragedy set in motion by the written word.  Briony, the young girl of the house who fancies herself a writer of plays and stories (and has just finished crafting a new play as the film opens), intercepts and reads a typewritten note from her family’s gardener.  The strongly worded note, a draft of a note meant for the girl’s older sister, distorts the girl’s view to such a degree that she later jumps to unreasonable, and regrettable, conclusions.

The main musical theme of Atonement is played as a repetitive motif on a piano.  And recognizing that the physical action of the film is propelled by what happens at a typewriter, composer Dario Marianelli has woven the music from the piano and the sound of a typewriter together.
[audio:Dario_Marianelli___Briony_(from_Atonement).mp3]
It is a brilliant musical move.

Music permeates every moment of this movie.  The sounds of objects in the film ricochet off of the musical score like instruments in a contrapuntal symphony: the click of a cigarette lighter, overhead lights being switched on in an infirmary corridor, the busy clacking of the typewriter keys and wrrrrhh of the platen as the paper is ripped from the carriage.  Robbie, the gardener, fights for the inspiration to compose the perfect love letter to Cecilia, the older sister, by playing a record of La Boheme (itself a tragedy of doomed love).  Briony’s rigid, regimented behavior and mindset are exemplified by her constant march through the hallways of the family’s house, arms straight by her side, making turns at sharp right angles and proceeding like an arrow, accompanied by the even pad of her own feet and the metallic tap-tap-tap of her musical theme (in the audio clip above).

I’ll admit that I became so cognizant of what the music was doing at nearly every moment in the film that many small details seemed to reveal themselves to me as important.  The light from a window on the left side of Cecilia glows warmly between her lips as we watch her light a cigarette.  Robbie’s thumb glances off the edge of a teacup in a clumsy, intimate moment.  The splash of Briony’s foot in a stream folds into the water’s trickling current.  These things each have a musical quality of their own.

By challenging us, in the opening scene, to hear music from such a seemingly mundane object as a typewriter, Dario Marianelli and the film’s director Joe Wright invite us to find music anywhere within the story, and to compose our own individual mental versions of the film’s musical score.  The one I created is still resonating within my skull, four days later.

I am very eager to see this film again.