For my first post, I have decided to write about the movie Atonement. Ginnie had been wanting to see it for a while, so tonight we sat down and watched it. The story is set in England during the time of WWII. Briony Tallis is a girl about the age of 13 who has a crush on a man named Robbie Turner. Robbie was in love with Briony’s older sister Cecilia and therefore pays no mind to Briony. Everything became complicated when Briony began to get the idea that Robbie was a sex-addict, based upon a letter that he wrote which he intended to throw away. When her cousin was raped and she was the only witness to the crime, Briony accused Robbie of being the perpetrator. This set off a chain of events that changed everyone’s lives involved forever.
The universal appeal of this film is that we have all made someone to be a horrible monster in our mind at one time or another because we simply did not like him. This type of thinking can easily lead a person to make up a lie about the “monster”, much like Briony did regarding Robbie. The title of the film atonement literally means “at-one-ment.” Briony is forced through the rest of the film to try to make peace-or atonement-with everyone she hurt by her actions. From the Christian perspective, Christ made atonement for our sins so that we could have peace with God. Even though we have peace with God through Christ, I wonder if there is ever an instance when no atonement can be made to restore a human relationship when a terrible mistake is made. This leads me to believe that we must carefully consider every action we make in our relationships with others; for, it could be that our actions have more dier consequences than we could have ever imagined.
s.t.
