Atonement - book and film

[meglet]

If you want to read the book or see the film please don't read this question.

Has anyone both seen the film and read the book as you may be able to help me out. I have read the book and went to see the film last night and left a bit confused. I was pleased that it stayed very faithful to the book for sections 1 and 2 but was a bit confused by the 3rd section.

In the book I thought that the scene between Briony, Ceceila and Robbie in the flat in Balham was true. But in the film, Briony says that she invented the scene to make the book more enjoyable for her readers. Of course in the book she wasn't likely to publish until after her death so the 3rd section has definitely been changed but my question is this � in the book, do Robbie and Cecelia meet again in Balham or is the film correct and I misread this part of the book?

Many thanks

[emidevitt]

At the end of the book, we discover that Briony had actually been the narrator of the story.
It doesn't clearly states that she made up the last encounter with cecilia and robbie but she says: "it is only in this last version [the one she wrote in march 1999] that my lovers end well, standing side by side on a south London pavement as I walked away. All the preceding drafts were pityless. But now I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, i tried to persuade my readers that Bobbie turner died of scepticaemia at Bray Dunes on 1June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Undergroud station."
This means Briony has very possibly changed the outcome of the story in order to give the reader a "sense of hope or satisfaction", just like the endind of The Trials of Arrabella had clumsily done before. ("it occured to me that I have not travelled so very far at all, since I wrote my little play.")

"Atonement" is all about the differences between fiction and reality and the powers of the novelist over her story. Telling the absolute truth was "always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all."
Reality is what the novel says: "But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish."

I know it is confusing and I found the ending a bit frustrating myself. But i liked this reflexion on novel writing, morals and reality, duties and powers of the story teller.
E.

[meglet]

Thank you emidevitt. I think I was so keen to find out how the book ended that I read it fast and perhaps didn't take it all in. The film certainly interprets that section of book as an admission from Briony that she invented the last meeting as in the film, Robbie never makes it back from Dunkirk. The book says he dies on 1st June but we aren't to know if he returned from Dunkirk and was then posted back.

In the film Briony says that she wanted to give them the ending they were denied but, in my opinion, to give readers the "hope and satisfaction" in this way just serves to lessen her guilt. Strange, seeing as atonement is both the theme and the motivation of her book.