Director: Joe Wright
Producer: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Paul Webster
Screenplay: Ian McEwan (novel) Christopher Hampton (Screenplay)
Musical Score: Dario Marianelli
Stars: Keira Knightly, James McAvoy and Brenda Blethyn
Genre: Wartime Drama
Synopsis:
Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit. Based on the British romance novel by Ian McEwan.
The opening titles consist with a Courier (typewriter) font
naming the opening titles and the title itself. Throughout all the words and
letters appearing a non-diegetic typewriter audio is going on in the
background. This then turns out to be diegetic as later on the sequence we find
one of the main characters’ writing a script.
Once the titles have gone the black background cuts to a
shot of a doll’s house-one that looks remarkably like the house they are living
in. It’s a very old, Georgian styled doll’s house and the exterior design is
identical to the architecture of the large mansion the characters are living
in. this may be because the director wanted to give the audience the idea of
the kind of house the characters are calling their home and also a typical
house that would have been owned by the bourgeoisie. The camera slowly does a
backing track shot of the doll’s house and pans over some figures of animals
all in a line two-by-two. This clearly shows the age of the child, between 8
and 13. Then we see a silhouette of a girl sitting down on a typewriter-this is
when the audience realises that the typewriter sound is diegetic. The quick pace of the typewriter, matches the
quickness that the little girl is walking.
The Mise-en-scene throughout the opening matches the class
standard and the up-to-date fashion. For example the short hair was very
popular in the 1930’s so the fact that the little girl and the mother both have
the short hair shows that the producers have stuck to the period of the drama.
Also the little girl has pleats on her skirt which was very 1930’s fashion and
was very popular in magazines like Vogue. The hairstyles were also a trend that
was started by Vogue. This type of hairstyle was popular among the bourgeoisie
but when the war started the women refused to go by the fashion trends as the
magazines were not being imported from the European country’s that started the
trends. So women in Britain started their own fashion that resulted in
Tea-dresses-usually made from old table cloths and curtains- and the hair
dressing profession was not as popular so women made their own styles at home
with shoulder length waves and kiss curls all made with cut strips of rag. This
is seen later on right into the war when the young girl becomes a military
nurse.
The décor of the house coincides with the supposed age of
the doll’s house-which previously mentioned was meant to be a sneak peak of the
house that the character’s live in. The banisters and the staircase have a dark
mahogany touch and the wallpaper shows the era of the film.
The modern (although not so modern now) typewriter seems
quite binary as it sits on a small bureau in a pastel coloured play room. This
though (even if you hadn’t a clue of what the era is) shows how the age this is
helpful for the audience and gets them wondering also why a little girl has a
typewriter. Is it hers? Her mother’s/father’s? We understand later that it is
hers and this then concludes how well off they are as a family. Although it is
the start of the war because of the sense of how rich the family is; when
seeing the many maids, cooks and how large the house is with all its twisting
corridors and beautiful décor. One just happens to wonder how far off are they
going to be when they enter the war and whether they actually succeed in
keeping their home.
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