Pride And Prejudice And Atonement. From Love To Truth: Essay About The Novels And Their Film Adaptions.

Narrativa anglesa i cinema
Marta Ortega

Victòria Sanjuán Ruiz
French Philology

THEMATIC BLOCK I

Joe Wright, the 2005 filmmaker of Pride and Prejudice, has also directed Atonement. Can you find any continuity between the two films?

FROM LOVE TO TRUTH

Pride and prejudice and Atonement are two film adaptations of Joe Wright. Between these two works we can perceive some correlationsthat leads us to understand that a continuity exists. There are some story elements that will connect the two films and there are some technical film aspects that will create Wright’s own style. The singularity of the filmmaker style we can perceive a continuity over his works. 

Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen and Atonement by McEwan are mainly love stories. Both are interrumpted lovestories by exterior elements or factors. In Pride and prejudice Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy are separeted until the end of the novel by society aspects (they belong to different social classes) and other characters and its opinions (what Mr Wickham says to Elizabeth in the church about his relationship with the Darcy’s creates in Lizzy a bad opinion about Mr Darcy). In Atonement, Briony Tallis is thecharacter who separes the lovers, Celia Tallis and Robbie Turner. She misunderstands the fountaine’s scene and then starts creating a wrong opinion about Robbie.
Both novels and film adaptations present a happy ending. In Pride and prejudice, the story ends with a “real-fictional” happy ending, because Jane Austen writes that Lizzy and Mr Darcy got married at the end. It is “real-fictional”because it is the real end of fictional characters (literature and film characters). Meanwhile, in Atonement we also have a happy ending, even this one could be considered as a “fictional-fictional” outcome. The love story of Cecilia and Robbie is fictional because is a literature and film story, but, moreover, it is fictional because it is written by a fictional character, Briony Tallis. Nevertheless,apart from being “real-fictional” or “fictional-fictional” stories, both have a happy ending. Thus, we can understand that what it is important is that love goes over tragedies: rumors, wrong opinions or war.
Moreover, we can think that there is a continuity of the two stories because of the parallelism between Lydia Bennet and Mr Fitzwilliam’s relationship and Lola and Paul Marshall’s one.Lydia and Lola are both young girls that, in some way, are fooled by a man because of their lack of experience in life. Their choices (Lydia escapes and Lola hides the truth, that Paul Marshall is abusing her) make suffer their family. In spite of the trouble they cause, these relationships lead to marriage. But, far from being happy endings, these couples will always have a cloudy past.
In Pride andprejudice as in Atonement, the authors and the filmmakers allow us to perceive a notourious diference of social classes that condition the characters. We find a continuity in the social distance that exists between the lovers: Cecilia Tallis and Mr Darcy belong to the high class, meanwhile Robbie Turner and Elizabeth Bennet belong to he working class. We can understand than Atonement continuouswith the idea that we find in Pride and prejudice that love goes over social classes.
In addition, Atonement has a catalysing element of sexual tension, that we also find in Pride and Prejudice. The marble statue in the Parlour is an element that revels to Lizzy Bennet what she really feels about Mr Darcy. This scene is the starting point of her awareness about who is Mr Darcy. She realize thatfar from being proud and egoist, he is shy and distant man. The marble statue’s scene would be equivalent to the foutaine’s one. In Atonement, the catalysing element of sexual tension is the porcelaine vase. From this scene, the audience understand that Cecilia is not ignoring Robbie, but she is embarrased because of his presence.
We have to add that certain taglines could be applied to both...