TYPEWRITING ART AND LIFE

By Andrea Guachalla

Have you ever used a typewriter? If you’re younger than 20 years old at the time of reading this you probably haven’t. But it’s nice, it gives you a glimpse of the technology that was used decades ago. When you write on it you can hear a dry sound that comes with typing letters, and the hollow but bright sound when you press the spacebar. After finishing one row, you have to slide over the whole cardholder bail which is usually accompanied by a skirl at the end.

I am way too young to have experienced writing on a typewriter much, and now mostly working with a computer I don’t really see the need for using one, but I am aware that in past decades it was a highly valuable possession, especially in those times when people would still send handwritten letters or typewritten ones. Thinking of times of war when people couldn’t easily get their hands on ink and paper, much less a typewriter, I am sure that any of those would have been a prized possession.

I am absolutely sure of that because of Robbie Turner, a man who in the midst of World War II wished he had a typewriter, or at least some ink and paper to write a letter to his beloved Cecilia Tallis. Robbie, who happened to be in prison in 1940 in England, was offered the choice of joining the British Army as a way out of prison. He accepted the offer. One night, while traveling on foot with two of his fellow soldiers – having been left behind by the rest of the company – he found an empty house that had been bombarded by the Germans where they could take shelter. The three of them decided that it was better to hide there than to keep traveling through the night, the next day they would continue their way to Dunkirk where the whole company was waiting to be evacuated. 

As they quietly shared a few loaves of bread and discussed the best way to get to Dunkirk as soon as possible, a feeling of homesickness intruded Robbie’s heart. Homesickness… But what did that mean for him? In the last five years of his life he had been living in prison. His home was not a place anymore, but a person: Cecilia. Whilst his fellows stayed up discussing issues about the war and the possibility of going home, he recluded himself to another room where raindrops were falling on the floor through the cracked ceiling. He laid down on the floor, exhausted, and dragged his thoughts away from war and brought them to a happier place: What would be the best way to start a letter for Cecilia? “Dear Cecilia,” “Dearest Cecilia,” or just “Cecilia”? He couldn’t even see her, but just laying his hands on a typewriter to write a letter to her would have been enough… At least that way he could have told her about the horrors of the war and the sleepless nights he spent trying to remember her smile.

Robbie’s destiny would have been completely different if it hadn’t been for 13-year-old Briony – Cecilia’s younger sister. The Tallis family was a powerful one, they lived in a mansion in England and had enough money to finance Robbie’s studies, even though he was only the housekeeper’s son. Tragically, in the summer of 1935, when the Tallis had visitors coming from Northern England, a grievous crime was committed for which Robbie was falsely accused. Who accused him? Briony. Why? She had a dangerous imagination that led her to assure the police that Robbie was the one who committed the crime. Then, at that moment, she didn’t know what the long-term consequences of her false statements would be. Cecilia, Robbie’s life-long love, was the only one who stood up and defended him, but that wasn’t enough.

Robbie’s and Cecilia’s destiny in the fragile hands of a 13-year-old girl with a dangerously vivid imagination… What a tragedy.

That’s the story we read in Ian McEwan’s metafiction novel titled Atonement that was published in 2001. It is also the story we see in the film adaptation with the same title, directed by Joe Wright and released in 2007. And also, the story we listen to in the score Dario Marianelli composed for the film, in which he uses the language of music to beautifully portray the characters’ personalities and their tragic story. 

The context in which the story takes place sends one message to the characters, which is the same message sent by the book, the film, and the music to the audience: 

“Don’t believe what you read, what you see or what you feel.”

Why? Because the book and the film explore how differently various characters can perceive the exact same situation. Briony, the young and careless sister of the family, fails to listen to that message and ends up sending Robbie – who was a dear friend to the whole family and the love of her sister’s life – to jail. Forever ruining what might have been a happy life for Robbie and Cecilia.

The three works – book, film, and music – are divided into three parts, set in three different time periods and places. The first part is about how Briony’s imagination leads to ruin Cecilia’s and Robbie’s lives in the summer of 1935 in England. The second part is about the consequences of Briony’s false accusations and her realizing her mistake in 1945. Simultaneously to her realization, Robbie is shown battling in WWII in France, Cecilia working in a hospital in England and Briony training to be a nurse after having rejected her place at Cambridge University as a way of punishing herself. The final part is Briony at the end of her life in 1999, trying to make atone for her mistake by writing an autobiographical novel, in 1999 wherein she gives Cecilia and Robbie the happy ending she denied them.

This part is when the genre of the novel and movie plays an important role: metafiction, a genre of literature that seeks to explore the relationship between literature and reality, between life and art. This means that while reading the book – and also watching the film – you, as a viewer, are often reminded that you are reading a fictional work.

The characteristic metafictional quality to this production is built up as follows: You’re quietly following a plot that seems coherent and realistic, watching the story unfold, witnessing how after all the troubles and difficulties, Briony is finally able to reconcile with those who had their lives ruined by her imagination, and you feel that the whole story will come to a happy ending until… something unexpected appears on screen:

An elderly woman in a TV studio being interviewed by a reporter whose face is not shown. You wonder who that lady is until you hear that, with a shaky voice, she explains that the part of the story where Briony reconciles with Robbie and Cecilia is only partly true and partly a false story of atonement for her sin. The elderly woman is Briony, decades after the first two parts. After that unexpected revelation, the film shows the real story of what happened after Robbie heads to war, and Cecilia is left alone working as a nurse, and that will remain a secret in this article.

That is metafiction. 

If you want a more practical way of looking at it, you actually started reading metafiction in the first paragraphs of this article. You probably thought Robbie was a real person until I mentioned that the whole plot was part of a book. It gets weirder here, but it’s another way of looking at it: Right now, you have a writer writing about a writer who writes about a writer who writes about her own story. A story of atonement and redemption. And we all know all of this is fiction.

Or maybe not all of it.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Now, Ian McEwan who wrote the story and then worked as the executive producer along with Joe Wright to produce the film might rightly be considered a genius in literature, and Joe Wright might rightly be considered a genius filmmaker. They both managed to guide the viewers and/or readers to explore the limits between reality and fiction with both written work and film production, and for that, they were widely praised and recognized. Nevertheless, you know what’s more challenging than that? Exploring the same thing, the same limits between what is real and what is just a story without using your sight, but your hearing instead. That was the goal of the great Italian composer, Dario Marianelli, who took the challenging job of composing the score for the movie, and beautifully portrayed the metafictional nature of both movie and book alike.

He starts the score by unveiling hidden secrets: even before listening to the violins, violas, and the wind instruments interpreted by the English Chamber Orchestra, you listen to an unconventional sound that is very rarely – if ever – used to make music: a typewriter. The mechanical patter coming from typing on it is the start sound you hear on the first theme of the film titled “Briony” which alludes to one little secret: the whole story is being written by someone, and then, when the whole ensemble of instruments follow the rhythm set by the typewriter with a mysterious and fast melody, another couple of secrets are unveiled: Briony’s tendency to rush to conclusions and her real identity, which is – first and foremost – that of a writer.

The first connection between fiction and reality is made in the first seconds of the movie and continues progressively and beautifully in the next scenes: The sweet and sad melody of the themes “Robbie’s Note,” “Come Back,” and “Love Letters,” picture the epic love between Robbie and Cecilia that suffer such misfortune throughout the years, and then, the heroic and tragic melodies of “Half Killed,” and “Elegy for Dunkirk,” portray the dreadful war and the hopeless despair of the characters. 

All those themes add another layer to the scenes, characters, and situations – an enlightening one – that sends one message to the viewer: 

“What you don’t see, you can hear.”

Dario Marianelli

However, it is not until you listen closely to some of those themes and the way they merge with the scenes that you finally learn how ingeniously Dario crosses the line between reality and fiction: in the most famous scene of the film – a 5.5-minute single-shot filmed in Dunkirk, France – he merges the theme “Elegy for Dunkirk” being interpreted by an orchestra with a choir of soldiers that are actually singing a hymn in the scene itself while they wait to be evacuated from that coast. What seems to be a happy accident – the orchestra coincidently playing in the right cue to allow the choir to synchronize perfectly with the melodies and harmonies they are playing – is actually Dario’s careful orchestration. 

Likewise, in one of the last scenes, the theme titled “Denouement” can be heard. In the actual scene, there is a group of people seeking shelter in a tunnel due to the bombarding of German aircraft in the city; among the people there is one poor man who starts playing the harmonica, harmonizing perfectly with the music being played by the orchestra. Again, Dario’s careful orchestration. 

All of the worldwide recognized prizes Dario won for his score for Atonement carry meaning that goes beyond a recognition for a nice soundtrack. It’s a recognition to Dario himself for being the man who could transfer a literature genre, metafiction, to music. Starting with a simple, elementary typewriter…

A typewriter that was not only the means for connecting music, literature, and filmmaking, and furthermore connecting art and life, but also the means to convey that on a computer we might be able to go back by typing ctrl+z whenever needed, but never on a typewriter. Once you’ve misspelled something, there is no way back. Like in real life.

The typewriter is there to remind the audience that life is being written each day for each one of us and that we ought not to wait – as Briony did – until we are older to acknowledge our sins and mistakes, and atone for them, but rather we ought to be fair-minded and careful about the way we see complex circumstances, prompt to express our appreciation to our loved ones and eager to seek reconciliation and redemption before the last dot is typed.

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Other sources

• Behind the Score: Atonement. By Ashton Gleckman.
• Behind the score – Atonement (Live). By Ashton Gleckman.