Stars talk Atonement

AHEAD of Atonement's release this Friday the film's stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy and director Joe Wright, assemble at Claridges in London. Kerry Ann Eustice goes along to find out more about the film already been tipped for the Oscars.

It's an aptly elegant setting to discuss the film; a gorgeously-shot, emotional epic adapted from the best-selling, award-winning Ian McEwan novel.

There's no diva-like delay and the waiting journalists all seem surprised when proceedings get going very nearly on schedule.

James and Joe, both in smart-casual attire, debate with, a dressed-for-comfort but still stylish, Keira on who will sit where before things get started.

How much pressure did you feel about adapting such a well-loved book?

Joe: There's this weird thing people say that great books make bad films and bad books make great films. I had that paranoia running around the back of my mind.

But I don't have much choice when a piece of material gets its claws into me I'm at its mercy. So however much I try and talk myself out of something, I can't help but do it. And that's how it was with McEwan's spectacular novel, it just got under my skin. All those kind of concerns just had to be dealt with.

(To James and Keira) Did either of you know the book particularly well before you got involved?

Keira: No I hadn't read the book. I read the book before I did the film but not before I got the script.

James: I read the script after we'd done the film. Ha. No, I hadn't read the book either.

In terms of expectations though, certain characters have become quite well known. The character of Cecilia is fixed in people's minds

Keira: I think it is always quite daunting to try and do an adaptation of a book people are so passionate about. And speaking to people, people really love this book.

Of course, everyone's imagination is going to go off in different ways and they're all going to see the characters as different people. Hopefully what we can do is present them with a totally new version of it. And if you can do it well then that's great. Yeah, it is always quite daunting.

Robbie is so nice and has less edge, potentially, than other characters. Is it difficult character to get a handle on?

James: Errrrrmmm, he's an idealised version of humanity, absolutely. I think it's difficult to get a handle of on that because he was so good and so wholesome and I don't know many people like that. It wasn't until Joe came to me in rehearsal that I realised the possibility there might be someone like that somewhere.

The film is quite literary and bookish and you didn't seem to be afraid to do that.

Joe: I don't quite understand what that means.

Well, it's very much like the book and very true to the spirit of it.

Joe: I think the book is very visual. I tried to make almost literal adaptation of the book. When we got to a passage in the book like Robbie in the cellar and there's this little sequence which talks about going back to before it all happened and so we literally ran the film backwards. We were very literal about it and most of the changes which happened did so for financial reasons rather than creative reasons.

The book works, obviously, so we tried to just be faithful to it. I kind of had faith that the film would work to if we just stuck to the truth of the novel.

With a lot of adapted novels there's this catchphrase that at some point or another you need to throw the book away and I always used to nod my head and pretend to understand what it meant.

But I think you only throw the book away if it's rubbish and we never did that. We kept the book by our sides throughout the whole process. Obviously you have to cherry pick a bit. Literary people think literature and the written word has a monopoly over internal truth and, I personally, as a dyslexic don't agree with that.

For me the films of Fellini or Bergman or the great classical masters of the medium spoke just as much truth as Tolstoy or Dickens and it's just another medium and anyone who thought that the book was unadaptable was probably underestimating the power of film and the medium.

What research you did into the era and what practical insights did this have for your characters?

Keira: There's this great book called Wartime Britain in 1945 which does exactly what it says on the tin which I found quite helpful. Although not particularly for the 1936 sections.

We also had an historian come in and talk to us which was great. Even for political aspects. Where we were in 1936.

All of us were saying it's leading up to the war and they were like woah, wait a minute, they didn't actually know that for sure' and that was actually a big thing to get into all of our heads.

Another huge question was whether Cecilia would have been a virgin or not and how likely it would have been she would have had any other experience when she had been at Cambridge. You (points at Joe) wanted her to be a complete virgin but the historian said she probably wouldn't have been she'd probably, in her words, have had a bit of a fiddle, which I thought was quite interesting. So that was good.

Joe also got us to watch a lot of David Lean movies; In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter.

Joe: Humphrey Jennings and his descriptions were a particular reference.

James: Another particular thing which Keira hasn't mentioned, for the Dunkirk section of the movie we did some military training, a little bit. Obviously we spoke to some veterans too about their experience.

Keira, Cecilia can be quite a unlikeable character, did you find it a challenge trying to make her more sympathetic?

Keira: I didn't try and make her anymore sympathetic than what she was. I don't think, I thought she was a horrible person.

What was interesting about her was that she was a probably a very good person but she was just going through this particular period where she's being horrible to people. For no particular reason.

What I thought was interesting about her whole thing is you are looking at this whole period of 30s to 40s where stiff upper lip was at its peak. And she's certainly somebody whose emotions are repressed and she doesn't find it easy to tell everyone what's going on.

I think she's bubbling with emotions and rage and everything and she's a bit like a pressure cooker about to explode. But no, I didn't try and make her be any more sympathetic than I think she was.

I think in the book it's quite clear what's going on and, for me, particularly in that section, I used it as a bit of blueprint really and I totally understood why she was behaving in the way she was.

The Dunkirk beach scene is quite impressive. Was it a challenge to film?

Joe: In the screenplay, as you know in the book, you've got these sleeper attacks and hundreds of thousands of refugees on the road and people ebing shot and it's this epic journey. And so one day I went to Tim Bevan (partner at Working Title films) and said we need another $4m to be able to realise the whole walk to Dunkirk sequence properly.

And he, bless him, said I won't give you a dollar over $30m to make an art film. Immediately the hairs on my arm stood up and I went, what did you call me,' and it was at that moment I thought right this is the licence to do what I want'.

And so I pulled everything out of the walk to Dunkirk and made it these three figures walking to the beach and made it more of an esoteric journey.

I also shot sequences of them walking because I thought the monotony of the walk was something I really wanted to try and impress upon the audience. So there were these endless shots of three blokes walking through nothing that I thought were really profound and interesting. Obviously, if you're trying to portray boredom, then the audience is going to get a bit bored so those got cut back a bit. And then I put all our resources, what resources we did have, into the beach shot.

It should be born in mind the budget was pretty much the same as Pride and Prejudice, four million more, so we put all our resources into that beach. Then I thought ok we've only got one day with these thousands of extras and how do I utilise them to the best effect?'.

Originally I'd thought this montage sequence but to cover a montage property I'd need around 50 set-ups and as traditionally I only get 15 to 17 set-ups a day I thought we were going to be fairly short changed.

I knew at the beginning of the day we'd be spending all the time on these great shots and by the end of the day everything would be rushed. And so one day, kind of as a joke, I came in and said remember that shot we did in Pride and Prejudice with the long steady cam? Wouldn't be cool if we did that but on the beach?' And everyone went ha. And that amused me so I did it again. But as my friend Moya Brady says there's no such thing as a joke, Joe' and the joke turned into something dauntingly real.

I was also really interested in capturing really good light and I had faith at a certain point we were going to get really good light that day.

I'd almost chosen a location because of the direction of the light at evening. I wanted a magical, elegiac sense to that scene. It's a scene about wastefulness. It's a scene about the waste of human life, animal life, machines, of industry, of everything. Even Bibles are being thrown on the fire so Germans can't use them. And so that's quite and elegiac thing and I wanted that magic in the light.

So, we rehearsed all day and at six we started shooting and we got three takes. On the third take the light was with us and it was magical.

It was terrifying though because the radio contact between the camera and the recording devices was such a long distance that we didn't have a record of what we'd just shot. So we were all kind if looking at each other going did we get? Did we get it?'.

I went for a fourth take but the steady-cam operator collapsed as we came round the bandstand, so time was up.

How much of that scene is done on the hoof?

James: Very little. It was all done with pinpoint accuracy, really. We arrived at six in the morning and rehearsed forever. And you had to. Even though we had all day, we still could have done more.

Danny (Daniel Mays, who plays fellow soldier Tommy Nettle) and I particularly were just on the edge of messing it up hugely. I can see this when I look at it. I'm glad we got that third one before Danny and I royally f****** it up.

Had we had to stop and go again, Peter Robertson, on stedy-cam who did an amazing job, clearly was not up to it. He'd covered a couple of miles on the sand, running up hills, going up stairs. It's just too much while you're carrying a small elephant. It weighs a hell of a lot. We were really lucky Joe: It doesn't all go right but we won't tell you what bits went wrong.

For me the reason why that shot works, if it does, is the extras and the local people who came and gave their time with so much dignity. Tthey really put their hearts into it. My primary concern was making sure they were involved, engaged and feeling like they were performers.

There was this incredible feeling, this incredible energy of more than 1,600 people, all those minds focusing on one little bit of film. That was an incredible experience and one that I'll never forget. If it does work, it's a testament to the lads in Redcar.

Keira, how do you feel about shooting love scenes and how do you prepare yourself for them?

(Joe laughs) Keira: It's part of my job. I'm an actress and it's very obvious in this film the love scene is incredibly important. I think all you've got as an actress is your face and your body, what's inside your head and your voice. They are my tools, I have to use them.

Obviously, it's never going to be the most comfortable thing to do, particularly when your mate's directing you. You're thinking oh shit, I don't really want to do this,' Joe: It was a laugh.

Keira: It was actually. It then became a laugh. I mean, it's fine. It was incredibly important that scene was incredibly erotic and incredibly passionate. You have to believe these characters, based on that moment, wait for each other for four or five years.

And Joe was brilliant. He totally story boarded the whole thing; the foot rising out of the shoe, biting the lip, everything. So we knew exactly what we were going into which makes it a lot easier.

You have to deal with these things, particularly when it's that important a scene and particularly when it has to be that erotic.

What's wonderful, I think, and what I thought at the time was clever is it's not showing anything. You don't see anything and yet I do believe it's 10 times more erotic than most love scenes where you see absolutely everything and they're gratuitous and sort of pointless. This one certainly wasn't. It was actually quite an exciting thing to do.

James: They can be like car chases.

Joe: It's choreography. Like you choreograph a piece of dance and want it to be really precise to express that feeling. Because if you just go, ok, now make out against the book shelf,' nothing would happen basically.

James: It's actually quite liberating to have a director sit you down and say do this and do that. It seems a bit sordid but it's actually quite liberating as an actor. What's amazing in this film is that Joe left it in no uncertain terms what we trying to achieve and you knew what you had to do and when to do it. In a love scene it's really, really, really advantageous because you don't have that horrible moment of what do I do now.' Do I feel her boob, or?' You know?

What about the casting of the three Brionys. Wasn't Romola Garai (Briony aged 18) the last to be cast of the three?

Joe: It's true, yeah. Often when you have a child play a version of the same character as an adult actor, you get the adult actor first and then try and find someone who can not only act but also look like the adult. We did it the other way round.

I kind of had Vanessa (Redgrave, who plays Briony as an older lady) in my head I really wanted to cast Vanessa because I worship the water she walks on. But I didn't cast her until I found a young Briony so therefore it didn't matter what she looked like.

So we hunted for a Briony who could act basically and it's amazingly difficult to find kids who can act. Saoirse is the clearest example of the acting gene I've ever come across. She just can do it and it's really weird.

(Laughter) No, it is. You work with actors, like Keira and James, and you think well obviously they were not born good; they've learnt and they've trained. But then you meet someone like Saoirse and you go well she hasn't trained' and this is what talent is. Maybe James and Keira were also like that, I don't know. But she was extraordinary.

When I had her I could cast the other two.

I learned something from An Angel at my Table which was make one big visual statement about the character - in An Angel at my Table it was frizzy red hair, which was probably a bit much for Briony - and then you'll know immediately who that person is.

So she'll get the same hairstyle and the same mole on her cheek and the same blue eyes and that was it. Briony does the extraordinary feat to maintain the same hairstyle for 70 years.

How did Antony Minghella (who plays himself interviewing Vanessa's Briony) take direction?

Joe: Very badly. No, he was wonderful. Anthony is a friend and I showed him the script of Atonement before I was filming and he asked some really awkward questions and that was really good.

We talked about the whole project a bit and I was trying to cast someone to play the interviewer and it was very difficult because I didn't want to cast Melvyn Bragg, he may have upstaged Vanessa.

James: Kirsty Wark?

Joe: Kirsty Wark I thought about. But I wanted a man for the role for some reason.

James: Paxman?

Joe: Paxman again would upstage her. Know what I mean? I wanted someone with an authority, so didn't want some very plain actor. Then, I'm not sure who came up with it. Either my girlfriend or (cinematographer) Seamus McGarvey or maybe they came up with it at the same time when we were drunk. Oh what a great idea, let's get Antony Minghella'. So that's who we ended up with.

And it was wonderful on the day. It was a lovely. We talk about sex scenes and there are certain scenes which have this label of the closed set. Certainly love scenes are one of them. But that scene was also a closed set.

I find emotions are just as exposing, if not more exposing than love scenes. So everyone was very calm and quiet and it was all about looking after Vanessa. Antony was able to do that well. He didn't take any of the emotional space. He was very respectful and it was a lovely day.

People talk about the length of the steady-cam shot but that close up of Vanessa probably is almost as long and they are two very different extremely long shots. That was probably my favourite shot in the movie.

(To Keira) Which scenes did you most admire?

Keira: It's not the one I'm in. It's the scene with James and Danny Mayes. It gets me every single time. He's a completely phenomenal actor, and I think James will agree, that he's absolutely brilliant.

In a funny way that's why I really enjoyed looking at Celia Johnson (in Brief Encounter). She has this incredible ability not to say what she's feeling but you know exactly what's going on. I think it's a really exciting thing.

It's everything which is not said that's important and it added to the entire tension of the fact these people aren't able to be like we are today. Socially they can't do that. It's all inner conflict bubbling beneath the surface.

In a funny way, I think I found it quite liberating. It was more enjoyable to keep it all in. It was an amazing experience.

Joe: So much has come from America since then, including the way after a sentence we often leave our mouths open. That kind of slack-jawed American cowboy. It's a really horrible thing. No one shuts their mouths anymore. It was something we had to keep reminding ourselves about.

Keira: He said to me all the time Keira shut your mouth'.

Joe: There were things like it was fascinating to think about what changes have occurred during the past 60 years and how we've changed and what it was like before then. I don't know about this whole American, got to talk about your emotions all the time.

Atonement (15) is released September 7

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