Psychical Distance and Breaking the Fourth Wall in ATONEMENT

In class today, we were discussing the idea of psychical distance and how it relates to breaking the 4th wall in theater. Dawson relates the idea of distance to Peter Pan and the plea for audience participation when Tinkerbell poisons herself to save Peter. At the time of Peter Pan's original conception, interactive theater may have been unheard of. However, the invitation of the audience into the plot of the play seems commonplace nowadays due to our acceptance of what McLuhan references as cold media.

As I was leaving class, the film Atonement, directed by Joe Wright, kept swirling in my brain. The first time I saw the film, I was very emotionally invested. I distinctly remember yelling (in my mind of course) at the screen during shocking parts and also feeling so much pity towards the star-crossed lovers Cecilia (played Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy). However, my emotions reached their climax towards the character of Briony.

If you aren't familiar with the work, the film is based on Ian McEwan's novel of the same name, here's a very brief synopsis... It is the story of Cecilia and Robbie who are split apart by Cecilia's sister Briony. Briony witnesses a terrible act and accuses Robbie for the incident. The blame is based on false notions and Briony, a writer, revisits these events later in life; she even writes a beautiful novel about Cecilia and Robbie's romance. However, to the audience's surprise, almost the entire movie is the story Briony writes. And, close to the end, an interviewer interrupts the climax of the film by speaking with a now elderly Briony. This interruption was quite controversial among critics--A. O. Scott panned the movie in his New York Times review.

The question I think I'm attempting to work towards is why choose this interruption? Maybe in the terms of psychical distance, Wright makes a directorial choice for the viewer to have more of a cathartic experience for Briony rather than for the ill-fated romance of Knightley and McAvoy's characters. With this interruption, he briefly distances the viewer from the lovers and creates less distance between the viewer and Briony. What also makes such a poignant end to the film is that the viewer sees into "real story" the author lived (in this case, Briony) and how it affects her semi-autobiographical work.