Atonement uses a clever technique through out the film, the use of dual narratives, where we see the story in the eyes of a different character from time to time.
We first get an insight to the life of the pivotal character of the film a young Briony. The scene is set up with the establishing shot of B's Bedroom, the dolls in the design of the actual home to where they live, with the digetic sound of the type writer tapping away, a significant factor to the storyline. In the following scene we have a point of view/over the shoulder shot of the fountain scene where in Brionys perspective we see what looks bad on the mans behalf, with the girl stripping in front of him, the turn away of the camera and the clear shock of Briony who we have already realized has an imaginative mind, we return to see the girl soaked and what looks like the man shouting at the girl, the audience is unclear what happened but is made to feel the man is at fault.
The audience only comes to realise that this was the case when the use of clever editing, reveals what really happened, we left the last scene seeing Cecila storming back to the house, we next see her storming about in the house, at this moment in time we do not realise its going to show her perspective, the audience is made to feel this is the aftermath of the event. This use of editing makes the film flow really smoothly and doesnt make things just looked plonked randomly.
The sound of the typewriter is used effectively as a way to introduce Briony as we the audience has associated the sound of the typewriter with Briony.
The film uses a clever storyline to lead stories into other stories using dreams, letters,story telling.
Clever use of camera shots and editing to change scenes, where they use objects as a separator, e.g a hedge is used and the camera cuts away from Cecilia and uses the darkness of the shadow to move into a shot of inside a room, as if both scenes are on either side of the hedge when clearly thats not the case. The cutaway is used as a "buffer" between shots (to help the editing process), or to add interest/information.
Through out the early scenes of the film, Briony imagination has led her to believe that Robbie is a 'Sex Pest' this is encouraged more in the library scene where we have in Brionys perspective that in the dark, dim lit quiet library that she has just walked in on Robbie 'Raping' Cecilia but its only with the change of perspective the atmosphere of the library has set up a romantic scene, fall of love and passion . The perspective of Briony and her imagination of what Robbie is the key thing towards Robbie arrest
All the scenes are linked to one another every scene is important to the storyline, how the audience is made to feel, the futures of the Characters
In the second half of the film we get the perspective of the same characters but in a different age, Soldier Robbie and Nurse Briony during the world war II, this was effectively created by the use of sending a letter, to reading it, to visits, dreams, story telling. A simple but effective method to change scenes, times etc smoothly.
The last scene showed an old Briony in a talk show, talking about her book, as if the whole film just watched was the summary of the book, that the film was just ilustrating the words of the book.
