Briony
Briony Tallis was always my favourite character in Atonement, both book and movie. Most people I watch the movie with don’t understand why, and don’t have any sympathy for her in the slightest.
I always had sympathy for her. She was cold and arrogant and selfish, but I always related to her. When I was in high school I had this really amazing English teacher. She went off on tangents a lot and one day she was talking about some man she used to know, and then stopped and said “I should have married him.” She was married already, and I thought once, nasty thoughts like this pop into my head all the time, OCD and all that, what if I saw her with her husband one day and said to him, “She wishes she’d married someone else!”
Obviously I never did it. Plus it’s probably not even me thinking, it’s the OCD. But still. That’s why I could never not sympathise with Briony.
January 25, 2009 @ 11:03 am
I’ve not seen the movie, but have read the book and I don’t really buy her as excessively cold or arrogant. She’s just a product of the one mistake, something which has made her self-reliant and objective, but she’s never short of compassion or love beneath the prickliness.
January 25, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
She comes off as quite cold in the movie, but I think that’s more down to the acting and direction than anything else. You’re right that she’s compassionate, though. I do think she’s arrogant, though, but in the way that almost everyone (or at least almost every writer) is beneath the surface, secretly thinking the world’s their world and . If that makes any sense. (This is coming from someone who hasn’t read the book in a while, though. :p)