PUTTING HUMPTY DUMPTY TOGETHER AGAIN Oscar Film: “ATONEMENT”
Matthew 4:1-11
Rev. Gary Paterson
February 10, 2008
So… today is the first Sunday of Lent. It’s about the earliest it can ever be. You remember… Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox; so when Easter arrives on the 23rd of March, it’s no wonder that Lent catches you by surprise. I mean, I feel as if I have just recovered from Christmas.
Nevertheless… here it is. And so we hear that classic “first Sunday of Lent” Scripture reading… Jesus, immediately following his baptism, enters the wilderness and faces temptation. Every year this story launches us into our Lenten journey – the recognition of temptation; the need for time to ponder, to search; to be aware of our propensity to make unhelpful even destructive choices; to accept that our lives will inevitably include times of testing – decisions will be made that will unfold into endless consequences that shape the rest of our lives.
Sometimes it can be helpful to parse the temptations that Jesus faced as he struggled to determine what kind of ministry he would engage in – stones to bread… his own creature comfort perhaps, or the desire to be miracle-worker, rescuer and hero; jumping from the temple spire… guarantees of personal safety perhaps, or maybe a “look at me, how special I am” kind of a thing; ruler of all the cities of the world… oh no, that one’s really familiar… power, wealth, control, “my will be done”. On the other hand, sometimes it’s simply enough to know that temptation is a reality – for Jesus, for all of us; you don’t need the details. Mark’s gospel, for instance, doesn’t feel any need to list the specifics -- “And the spirit immediately [after the baptism] drove him [Jesus] out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan….” Perhaps Lent is the time to accept that temptation, testing, decisions and consequences… that’s part of what it means to be human beings, responsible for our lives, adult, free… sometimes making mistakes, sometimes big ones; always having to live into the consequences of our choices – celebrating, grieving, mending, enlivening, forgiving… Now that’s the kind of Lent I could look forward to.
Now, here at St. Andrew’s-Wesley, we are developing another Lenten tradition -- the first Sunday of Lent is when we kick off a series of sermons that explore how the Christian story intersects with film, specifically with some of the movies that have been nominated for Oscar awards. Why do this, you might well ask? Well, movies are one of our culture’s most popular and accessible art forms… “You wanna chill out on a Friday evening? -- Hey let’s go to the movies.” But good films… and there are a lot of good films… well, nearly always, they crack open key questions and concerns… and for a couple of hours you get to watch fellow human beings struggling to make sense of their lives, even as you are being entertained.
Vancouver is the most secular corner of North America… minimal interest in organized religion; but, oh boy, are we spiritual. And so, while the churches are only partially filled on a Sunday morning, the movie theatres fill up on Saturday night, and Blockbusters and Rogers do a booming business – because movies are where people are doing a lot of their spiritual exploring. Sometimes very explicitly, -- in films like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Stars Wars, The Matrix; more usually, in a more subtle and indirect ways. Most films nominated for an Oscar award will take you on journey, will present a question, an alternative point of view. And that’s what intrigues me… oh, I love movies regardless; but even more, when you put a good film beside the Christian story, then a fascinating dialogue emerges… and a sermon… which is part film review, part preaching, and a whole lot of “reel spirituality”.
Well, take “Atonement”… just for example. I mean – the very title is a give away! A friend of mine was looking at our big sign at the corner of Nelson and Burrard, She had no idea that we were about to start a series of sermons on the Oscar films, so when she saw the word ATONEMENT in big capital letters, she cringed ever so slightly, anticipating most likely, a long, boring sermon on that classic Christian doctrine – how Christ’s death on the cross atoned for our sins, and reconciled us to God. Uh, huh… now that would be a winner, wouldn’t it? Well, actually… no, just kidding… at least for today.
But the film, based on Ian MacEwan’s novel, truly is an exploration of atonement… an action occurs, a choice is made – a mistake, no something much more… a lie, a tragic error; well… let’s be theological: a giving in to temptation, a sin. Life goes off track; heart-breaking consequences cascade into the future… and the rest of the film tries to understand how you make amends; what does repentance look like… and forgiveness? Can you ever put Humpty Dumpty together again?
The movie begins with the camera opening up a classic English country side garden; it’s early morning, the birds are singing… lush greenness is everywhere. It’s summer; the sun is shining; life feels slow and rich; water everywhere… fountains, the pond, the brook. “Morning has broken, like the first morning…” – is this what Eden might feel like? And of course, the central action focuses on the blossoming of a love story: Cecilia, daughter of the mansion, and Robbie, son of the housekeeper, separated by class and social norms, yet still love wins the day. There is a wonderful scene, where Cecilia dives into the fountain to retrieve a shard of a broken vase; dressed only in a silken undergarment she surfaces, as if suddenly reborn, and stands almost naked in front of the mesmerized Robbie… it is Adam and Eve in the wonder of their first encounter.
But right from the beginning you know there will be problems. In the first few moments, as the film slowly unfolds, the sound of birds singing is drowned out by the clack, clack, clack of typewriter keys. Human imagination and fantasy and dream are hard at work; words and bullets… they both have the capacity to destroy. And of course, you are given the date… 1935… and you know that war is descending upon the world. Temptation is omnipresent; Eden never lasts.
The basic plot is simple… Briony, Cecilia’s 13-year old sister – precocious, fanciful, imaginative, spoiled, and just on the cusp of her own sexual awakening – Briony witnesses the love story, the unfolding passion between Robbie and Cecilia… at the fountain, as the lovers fight, as Cecilia jumps into the water and ascends in her near-nakedness; then a letter with a blunt Anglo-Saxon word… “the worst word you can ever imagine” says Briony; and finally, sex in the library. Now that’s a scene well done… the lovers are just discovering the mutuality of their passion… a kiss… I love you. Meanwhile Briony discovers a fallen ear ring in the hallway carpet… a star, no less. She picks it up, wonders, and then begins to follow the star… all this done in silence… through the long hallway, shadow and light mingling on her face, as if she is going down a dark, half-lit, tempting labyrinth; finally opening the library door… to be confronted by her sister and Robbie in hot, passionate coupling… a primal scene if ever I saw one; Freud would have a field day… “Cecilia?” she cries out. And that’s it for dialogue.
Later that evening the plot deepens… a couple of children are missing; everyone runs out into the garden, into the darkness, hoping their flashlights will be enough to enable them to find their way. Briony stumbles upon a sexual assault … and she chooses to name the perpetrator… “Robbie!” she says; “I saw him; I saw him with my own eyes!” Except, of course, she didn’t. She tells the lie! The scene eventually ends with Robbie in handcuffs, dragged away in the police car, his mother screaming out over and over, “Liars! Liars! Liars!” while Briony looks out through the upstairs window, silent, expressionless.
Why… isn’t that always the question. Why did Briony lie? Why do we humans seem so ready to make wrong decisions… that hurt, distort, break relationship? Don’t just say “original sin” as if that answers the question; but don’t forget that word either – why do I and everyone else I know… why do we do these things? Why can’t I resist temptations when they are so clearly going to bring destruction? Was Briony simply ignorant? She saw things she didn’t understand, which made her think of Robbie as a “sex maniac – he could do anything” – is that what was responsible for the lie -- a fanciful, overactive, excited imagination? Well, partly. Was it a class thing… upper class privilege quick to believe the worst of others? Maybe.
But the film goes deeper than that… and seems to suggest that we humans will always be caught up in the limits of our own worlds… we see events, and are forced to interpret them based upon our own understanding… and there will always and inevitably be misperception and misinterpretation. To underline this truth, two crucial scenes… Robbie and Cecilia at the fountain and in the library… these scenes are shown twice: once from Briony’s perspective, and then from Robbie and Cecilia’s. Same events… two very different understandings. And thus… decisions that will break everything asunder.
But even that isn’t a full enough understanding. Ignorance; inevitable mis-understandings… yes. But also choice. We discover in flashback scenes, if we had not already suspected, that Briony has had a crush on Robbie. And to see him in the arms of her sister… well, a jealousy that barely knows its own name is sparked. How much of Briony’s decision flows from her own inarticulate hurt and anger? How many of our own choices arise from dark places, that Freudian id we barely comprehend, even as we feel the surge of emotion, impulse, quick reaction? Decisions made… understandable yes; but not always justifiable -- as Robbie will shout at Briony in a later scene of confrontation: “How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? How old?!”
The second half of the movie reveals the consequences of Briony’s decision. In an interesting jump, the film cuts from the moment of Briony’s falsehood, into the war fields of Northern France. It’s four years later, and Robbie is part of the British army’s retreat to the beaches of Dunkirk. When we so abruptly move from what is essentially a family drama to a war scene, it’s not clear at first what is happening, but then emotional connections start to get made, almost as if to say, the same forces that led to Briony’s betrayal are also at work among nations. Different specifics, but temptation, nevertheless. Ignorance; misperception and misunderstanding; anger, hurt, jealousy, envy… person or country, there is no way to stay in Eden.
This latter part of the film begins with a meal, as French peasants wanting to help the fleeing British soldiers bring bread and wine. But then, almost immediately after, we find Robbie walking through green fields in the dawn... then through an apple orchard, where the mist is gentle, and fruit is ripening upon the branch… then to discover that in the middle of that orchard twenty school girls have been massacred… their still-uniformed bodies lying in the morning grass.
You get caught in the same whiplash – yes it’s beautiful, it’s falling apart, when Robbie suddenly smells the sea, and runs to the crest of the next sand dune, expecting to look on the sea, on rescue, on hope; only to see three hundred thousand soldiers strewn across the beaches. In a surrealistic, five-minute unbroken sweep, with an incredible tracking shot, we follow Robbie through this Inferno of blood, vomit, panic, fire, Fellini-esque ferris wheel and merry-go-round, horses being shot, men getting drunk… the final consequence of our human betrayals is a living hell.
But perhaps more interestingly, the second half of the film is an exploration of how we humans attempt to put Humpty Dumpty together again; how we try to make amends, say sorry, find reconciliation… well… how does someone “atone”. It’s Briony’s question, but surely it belongs to all of us… how do we live with guilt and regret; what actions are called for? What might we do?
When we next see Briony, after the great “Liars” scene, she is a student nurse in London. She has turned down the chance to go to Cambridge university in order to help in the war effort. Imagined martydom, or sincere penance? But it’s pretty clear that she is carrying a load of guilt. There is a powerful scene where Briony is scrubbing her hands, it goes on and on, the brush scrapes away, over and over; so uncomfortable to watch, and so closely… expecting momentarily to see her hands bleed. Shades of Lady Macbeth endless washing her hands, crying “Out, out damn spot!” Is there any way to wash the blood off our hands?
Briony goes, finally, to visit her sister… to confess, to apologize… “I am very, very sorry….” Confession is always timely, even after four years; words of real regret, from the heart; they can make a difference; they open the door to actions that will attempt to change what might be changed, perhaps undo some of the damage. Briony agrees to approach family and lawyers, to tell the truth… to admit to her lie. At one point, she turns to Cecilia, saying, “I don’t expect you to forgive me….” “I don’t,” interrupts Cecilia. Which leaves a question hanging in the air – what needs to happen for us to know and trust that we are again at-one with those from whom we have been separated where wrong-going, guilt, hurt, destruction… where these thing lie between us as we patch together broken relationships. Yet isn’t that precisely what we humans hunger for and need? – at-one-ment with family, friends, creation, God?
Mary Oliver, in a poem called “Heavy”, talks about the load we humans carry… she give me some words that help me understand a bit more about atonement, about how we get there. Listen:
“I did not die. Surely God had His hand in this.” That’s the first big clue -- our survival… it isn’t just up to us, this forgiveness stuff. Sometimes what we most hunger for is a grace that comes from beyond ourselves; a Spirit that understands us and names the wrong; that accepts, that knows that forgiveness is needed… and forgives; that re-connects us to the whole. Atonement ultimately comes from beyond us; from the person who was injured; but then even further… from God reaching out, whispering, “Come back to me; I’m here.”That timeI thought I could notgo any closer to griefwithout dyingI went closer,and I did not die.Surely Godhad His handin this,as well as friends.Still, I was bent,and my laughter,as the poet saidwas nowhere to be found.Then said my friend Daniel(brave even among lions),“It’s not the weight you carrybut how you carry it –books, bricks, [guilt,] grief –it’s all in the wayyou embrace it, balance, carry itwhen you cannot, and would not,put it down.”So I went practicing.Have you noticed?Have you heardthe laughterthat comes, now and again,out of my startled mouth?How I lingerto admire, admire, admirethe things of this worldthat are kind, and maybealso troubled –roses in the wind,the sea geese on the steep waves,a love,to which there is no reply?
Surely God had His hand in this – yes; but then, “as well as friends.” Friends – the people who support and forgive us; who understand us, and yet hold us to account precisely because we matter to them; people who accept us back into the circle.
And then finally… “practicing” … you need to work at it; atonement takes effort… though maybe something as simple as lingering “to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also…. troubled… roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves; two sisters talking to each other; two lovers twirling in the waves at Dover Beach… or not. The things that are kind and those that are troubled… a love to which there is no reply.