Blood and Guts - Page 6


The performances are profoundly touching, especially young Saoirse's Briony, as she witnesses the complexity of human relationships and finds them confusing and terrifying, the ideal preparation for an adult life as a novelist. When we meet the late-life Briony played by Redgrave, we can't perform a maneuver as cheap as forgiving her, any more than she can forgive herself. But we can get inside the aged Briony and work up charity and tenderness.

Directors have many ways of capturing and holding our attention—violence being only the most visceral. Another way, the one chosen by McEwan and Wright, is to bring us gently into the ambience of other people's lives, where we gradually learn to feel safely at home in some other time and place, and ultimately gain compassion for the ups and downs of life there. Few films have done this so well as Atonement. And we can get into and through it with many tears, but no blood or sweat.

Frank Pittman, M.D., is a contributing editor to the Psychotherapy Networker and is in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia. Contact: Fsp3md@aol.com. Letters to the Editor about this department can be e-mailed to Letters@psychnetworker.org.

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