September Book and a Movie: Atonement

Dorlana Vann ♦ October 6, 2013 ♦ 1 Comment

Book: Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan

Movie: Atonement (2007) directed by Joe Wright Screenplay by: Christopher Hampton

The set up:

Each month four of us (women ages 20-45) pick a book that has been made into a movie. We read the book and then get together for thematic food and to watch the movie.

On the menu:

We don’t know what the others are bringing. All we know is our category: appetizer, entrée (2 of us get this), or dessert. We can take food items directly from the book or go more inspirational. Below is what we ended up with this month.

Appetizer: Roasted Cauliflower and Heirloom tomato salad

Entrée: Quiche Florentine and French Bread

Entrée: Only one this time, we had one person who couldn’t make it this week.

Dessert: Chocolate bread pudding

My Book Review:

I liked it. Here are the words I jotted down to the describe the book: Intense, boring, sad, excellent writing. It had its ups and downs. I skimmed a lot, especially the war chapters. The author was very descriptive and really wanted to give his readers insight into each character, which sometimes made me sleepy but still a very thought provoking book:  how young is too young to be responsible for your actions.

My Movie Review:

I didn’t like it very much. It was  boring, especially the war scenes (which I really didn’t see what they had to do with the main plot of the story – in the movie or the book for that matter) The beginning moved really quickly through the scenes, and if I wouldn’t have read the book, I don’t think I would have really understood what was going on – and I probably wouldn’t have watched the entire thing.

Interesting Discoveries:

We were really surprised to learn that the film was nominated and won a lot of awards. Including an Oscar for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score

Dario Marianelli (which I guess the music was fine) Here is a link on IMDB that list all 27 nominations: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/awards?ref_=tt_awd

The Girly Discussions:

There was some discussion about the casting of Lola and Emily (the mother). They didn’t fit what we thought they would look like.

The costumes were awesome.

Most of us (I’m not going to name any names – lol) didn’t finish the book, so the premovie discussion was mostly about how boring the book was. But we all read to at least the middle of the book and so we were disappointed with how rushed the beginning of the movie seemed. Also, the sequence of events (going back to redo a scene from another character’s POV) seemed disjointed.

My Rating:

Book: 4 out of 5 stars

Movie: 2 out of 5 stars

The Bottom Line:

The book had too many details … the movie didn’t have enough details in the first half. Read the book, skip the movie. However, if you do want to watch the movie, be sure and read the book first. But then again, maybe the people who gave the movie such high marks didn’t read the book and therefore appreciated it more… IDK

Next month’s Book and Movie:

Serena by Ron Rash

Love and Laughter,

Dorlana