Adaptation Advance Access originally published online on July 12, 2009
Adaptation 2009 2(2):91-109; doi:10.1093/adaptation/app006
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Foregrounding the Media: Atonement (2007) as an Adaptation
* Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow. E-mail: c.geraghty{at}tfts.arts.gla.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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This article uses Joe Wright's 2007 adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement to argue that one of the key features of adaptations is the foregrounding of the media. It suggests that this feature is a way of creating a ‘knowing’ audience (as discussed for instance by Hutcheon and Leitch) out of filmgoers who cannot be assumed to have read the original book. The article analyses how Atonement (2007) presents writing, cinema, and television in the three sections of the film and comments on how these media are presented to the audience formally as well as through the complex narrative. It concludes with some comments on the film's ‘happy ending’, suggesting that this foregrounding may, for some viewers, be at the expense of mainstream cinema's traditional investment in emotion.
Key Words: Atonement • adaptation • audience • cinema • melodrama • television