Space for Atonement
Posted by tom | Jul 1, 2008
The script typing at the beginning of Atonement (2007) drew me in, reminding me of hours spent at my parents' typewriter which slowly morphed into an electronic typewriter and various computer keyboards. In some manner I too chronicle my life, relationships, and thoughts. Likewise, much of my energy is spent gathering people together to enact, to live in, to retell a true story. But the love, the truth, and the hope offered by Atonement (2007), both properly and improperly understood crossed a line which makes me wonder whether I have interest in watching such films any longer. If the answer is No, I surprise myself. Why?
Because I savor the opportunity to grapple with the questions and the plots/stories offered to us by the educational and artistic elite AND they provide an bridge for conversation to God's love, truth, and hope. But is the Atonement's award winning coveted cinematic chimera, the one in which I desire my mind to dwell along with family, friends, neighbors, the very creation itself? No.
What kind of atonement for evil ocurs when only writing, contemplating, and/or sharing with others about what one wishes had happened? None. When facing the end, it is time to confess one's sins to God, to cry out for mercy, and to receive forgiveness from God, even if one does not have opportunity for atonement/reconciliation with those to whom one contributed to their demise/difficulties (whether true, imagined, or only marginal in nature). But in the film (and I assume the book) such hope is NOT an option for those who know better about how hard/dark the world really is.
Maybe that is a redeeming quality of the film providing an bridge to regarding how life is NOT to be lived and how a godless culture wrestles with such questions. Yet is that an exercise in which I desire to enter again and again, angle after angle, film after film ... even with superb actors, music, settings, and stories? OR is it better for the real transforming Light (i.e., the true concrete hope of Christ Jesus taking part in the Biblical story/reality of Atonement) to fill my mind and cast out the darkness of this present age ... not giving it space for it's pictures (which speak a 1000 words) to receive consideration?
PS. Christianity Today's more positive review of Atonement can be found here.
