Spoiler alert: If you’re planning on reading Atonement or seeing the movie, you may want to stop reading now and click over here instead. Unless, of course, you can’t help yourself and simply must! know! right! now! what she has to say! In this case, keep reading. But know that I’m about to break the one rule I believe in and live by when it comes to ruining a film and that is this: Don’t talk/write/think/or even breathe about it to someone who hasn’t seen it. Because that makes you an asshole.
At any rate, consider yourself warned that I’m about to be an asshole.
Atonement is amazing but the movie, while good, fits snugly into the movie-doesn’t-measure-up-to-the-novel category, so I’d say get out that library card before you dump $10.50 on the flick.
The celluloid version is not without merit, however. Of course, there’s The Sex Scene in which Cecilia gets pinned by Robbie to the library shelves like an exotic insect on a bug collectors bulletin board. (This scene—which Sam has generously offered to re-enact and I told him, fine, whatever, we can try but ONLY if I have the green dress—is just about as phenomenal as it was on the written page.) On the sex front, there’s also a brief glimpse at a rape and the ensuing false accusation of the perpetrator. Then there’s war, complete with a field of dead French school girls laid out like sleeping angels, each shot through the head execution style, and wounded soldiers with splayed-open limbs, full-body burns and one blown off bit of skull with brain pulsing out. Finally, there’s the open-eyed death and drowning-a-la-Titanic of our protagonists.
So you see, this film has a little something for everyone including, apparently, the three year old girl who sat (with her mother and grandmother?) one row in front of my book club posse at the theater tonight. Presumably, she cannot yet read and therefore, the film truly is the next best option for exposing the child to such an intricate story.
And I ask you: What better way to introduce your toddler to such light subject matter at 7:30 p.m. on a Thursday night than with a high fructose corn syrup-filled snackie? That is, once you get past all that annoying plastic wrap which is best wrestled with during The Sex Scene, The War Scene, The Death Scene and Any Dramatic Music-Absent Scene.
Tomorrow, rather than taking Ruby to the zoo with her packed lunch of tofu, broccoli and soy milk, I think I’ll hit up McDonald’s and get her a Number 3 Value Meal with a Coke (supersized) and take her to see a gay porn. And if she sleeps through the night tonight, I may even get her high first as her reward.
9 responses so far ↓
1 stacy // Mar 7, 2008 at 3:26 am
I had a similar experience once–went to see Eyes Wide Shut–a truly disturbing and bizarre sexual and violent movie, and some woman was there with like, an 8 year old boy. And I just could not get over it. I kept replaying scenes from the movie in my mind (I’ve repressed them now, I’m sure) and thinking, what would a boy that age make of them? Nothing good. It really bothered me. People are absolutely incomprehensible to me sometimes.
2 Leslie // Mar 7, 2008 at 8:28 am
I am so glad someone else feels the same way that I do! In my opinion, It comes down to the parent being too selfish to wait until they can see the movie on their own, or a real lack of understanding about what is appropriate for children. There are movie ratings for the latter, but as for the selfish parents there is no cure…
3 Mike // Mar 7, 2008 at 9:51 am
Better yet, let her snort some coke and watch some good ol’ WWF Smackdown.
I’d rather have porn on public television than that shiite.
4 Kim // Mar 7, 2008 at 10:22 am
People are stupid. My step kids are 11 and 16 and I’m really afraid to let them watch The Simpsons (which they love and probably all the more because I’m afraid to let them watch it.)
As for Atonement… Why, I just rented it last weekend and asked my husband to watch it with me and at the end of the movie he was crying and then said that I had ruined his whole weekend by making him watch that sad movie.
5 Jenn @ Juggling Life // Mar 7, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Someday she’ll discover that the babysitter would have been cheaper than the therapy!
I’m kind of a bitch about stuff like that–I like to say in a loud voice, “I didn’t think this was a kid movie.”
6 Mrs. G. // Mar 7, 2008 at 7:08 pm
This has happened to me a couple of times, and it really prevents me from enjoying the flick. Talk about selfish parenting.
I do want to see that movie.
7 stupidmommy // Mar 8, 2008 at 4:23 am
My parents took me to see Animal House when I was eight. And now I’m a worthless deviant.
8 Bri // Mar 8, 2008 at 11:13 am
My parents took my little brother to see Road Trip with his friends when it came out. They didn’t know that there would be boobs and weed. My brother was like 12 at the time and was mortified.
9 Malcolm // Mar 11, 2008 at 2:41 pm
We watched An American Werewolf in London (on video at home) when my daughter was VERY little. She woke up for the werewolf transformation scene and was absolutely fascinated by it. How she laughed and laughed.
I guess it explains her choice of boyfriends.
(Did I write that!? What if she reads this? Help!)
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