Atonement

Briony - 18 years old: I am very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused you. I am very, very sorry...

After 'Becoming Jane' I had rather gone off the English Country Garden Flicks. Fortunately I discovered that this movie has been nominated for PLENTY of Oscar nominations. It is not set in the Victorian (yawn) era, but in the last century. The ethos of this film evokes another poignant story, one of the best novels I have ever read, set during World War 1 (Birdsong,by Sebastian Faulks). Birdsong's terrible strength lies in the understating of a harrowing and hartrending reality not very long ago. Atonement is more sentimental, but I might easily have been tjanking at the end, if I hadn't been sitting somewhat self-consciously (and self-consciously on my own in the cinema) elbow to elbow with sweaty couples.

It is an intelligent and beautifully rendered film. What's more, it does the job of demonstrating the cruelty of life and the fallibility of human beings in a drammatic and powerful way. The casting, acting - everything is superb.

For a review, go here.

In Christian terms, Atonement is rather less Oscar worthy. After all the sacred symbol for this religion is based on 'Atonement for original sin'. I am not sure which concept is more sinister or obnoxious. Original sin was coined by Augustine to render a prior term 'ancestral sin' obsolete. The premise is simple, if vulgar: Adam did something for which humanity would be permanently blemished, and only God could then make up for this blapse.

Dawkins rightly makes a mockery of the old barbaric ritual of blood sacrifice - in Christianity it is the absurd idea that God needs a drama to bring this about, killing himself, shedding blood, in order to 'forgive' mankind for these sins (sins committed by a symbolic Adam). A real drama to forgive a symbolic transgression? Or a mixture of metaphors?

It is somewhat ironic to realise then that without the death penalty (as an integral part of social/government justice) we would have no Jesus Christ. And another moral conundrum: "If Jesus had to be betrayed and then murdered in order that he could redeem us all, isn't it rather unfair of those who consider themselves redeemed to take it out on Judas and on Jews down the ages....Judas betrayed Jesus only because Jesus asked him to play that role." - Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion