ATONEMENT [2007]

Torn Apart by Betrayal

Separated by War

Bound by Love 

 Briony: Cee, why don't you talk to Robbie anymore?

Cecilia: I do. We just move in different circles, that's all.

 

Soldier: Come on, then, how come a toff like you, talks French and everything, ends up a private?

Robbie: Not eligible for officer's training if you join direct from prison.

Soldier: You're pulling my tit.

Robbie: No, I'm not.

They gave me a choice. Stay in prison or join the Army.

And for the record, the last thing I am is a toff.

Cecilia: Sorry.

Robbie: No.

Have you been in touch with your family?

Cecilia: No, I told you I wouldn't.

Leon waited outside the hospital last week, I just pushed past him.

Robbie: Cee, you don't owe me anything.

Cecilia: Robbie, didn't you read my letters?

Had I been allowed to visit you, had they let me everyday, I would have been there everyday.

Robbie: Yes, but... 
If all we have rests on a few moments in a library three and a half years ago, then I'm not sure, I don't know if...

Cecilia: Robbie, look at me.

Come back... Come back to me.

Briony: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Robby: That's an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do.

Briony: I wanted you to save me.

Robbie: Don't you know how easily you could have drowned?

Briony: You saved me.

Robbie: Stupid child! You could have killed us both.

Is that your idea of a joke?

Briony: I want to thank you for saving my life.

I will be eternally grateful to you.

The story can resume.

Our story can resume.

I will simply resume.

~Robbie Turner

Dearest Cecilia.

The story can resume.

The one I had been planning on that evening walk.

I can become again the man who once crossed the Surrey Park at dusk in my best suit,

swaggering on the promise of life.

The man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library.

The story can resume.

I will return, find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.

~Robbie Turner

Briony: I've never been in love.

Fiona: What, never? Not even a crush?

Briony: Oh, I had a crush once, when I was 10 or 11.

I jumped into a river to see if he'd save me from drowning.

Fiona: Now you're teasing me.

Briony: Oh, no. And he did save me.

But as soon as I told him I loved him, the feeling sort of disappeared.

Robbie: What is she doing here?

Cecilia: She wanted to speak to me.

Robbie: Oh, yes, what about?

Briony: The terrible thing I did.

Robbie: I'll be quite honest with you.

I'm torn between breaking your neck here and taking you and throwing you down the stairs.

Do you have any idea what it's like in jail?

Of course you don't.

Tell me, did it give you pleasure to think of me inside?

Briony: No.

Robbie: But you did nothing about it.

Briony: No.

Robbie: Do you think I asssaulted your cousin?

Briony: No.

Robbie: Do you think it then?

Briony: Yes. But yes and no.

Robbie: And what's made you so certain now?

Briony: Growing up.

Robbie: Growing up?

Briony: I was 13.

Robbie: How old do you have to be to know the difference between right and wrong?

What are you, 18?

Do you have to be 18 before you can bring yourself to own up to a lie?

There are soldiers of 18, old enough to be left to die by the side of the road, did you know that?

Briony: Yes.

Robbie: 9 years ago, you didn't care about telling the truth.

You, all your family, you just assumed that for all my education, I was still little better than a servant.

Still not to be trusted!

Thanks to you, they were able to close ranks and throw me to the fucking wolves!

I'm very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused.

I am very, very sorry.

~Briony Tallis

I'm dying.

My doctor tells me I have something called vascular dementia, which is essentially a continuous series of tiny strokes.

Your brain closes down, gradually you lose words, you lose your memory,

which for a writer is pretty much the point.

So that's why I could finally write the book, I think, I had to.

And why, of course, it's my last novel.

Strangely enough, it would be just as accurate to call it my first novel.

I wrote several drafts as far back as my time at St. Thomas Hospital during the war.

I just couldn't ever find the way to do it.

I had, for a very long time, decided to tell the absolute truth.

No rhymes, no embellishments.

I got first-hand accounts of all the events I didn't personally witness, 

the conditions in prison, the evacuation to Dunkirk, everything.

But the effect of all this honesty was rather pitiless.

I couldn't any longer imagine what purpose would be served by it.

By honesty... or reality.

Because, in fact, I was too much of a coward to go and see my sister in June, 1940.

I never made that journey to Balham.

So the scene in which I confess to them is imagined. Invented.

And in fact, could never have happened.

Because Robbie Turner died in septicaemia at Bray-Dunes on June the first, 1940, the last day of the evacuation.

And I was never able to put things right with my sister, Cecilia, because she was killed on the 15th of October, 1940, 

by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham tube station.

So, my sister and Robbie were neber able to have the time together they both so longed for, and deserved.

And which, ever since, I've always felt I prevented.

But, what sense of hope or satisfaction, could a reader derive from an ending like that?

So, in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out in life.

I'd like to think this isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness.

I gave them their happiness.

~Briony Tallis

*****

ENCHANTED [2007]

This Fairytale Princess is About to Meet a Real Prince Charming

 I've been dreaming of a true love's kiss,

and a prince I'm hoping comes with this.

That's what brings ever afterings so happy.

And that's the reason we need lips so much,

for lips are the only things that touch,

so to spend a life of andless bliss.

Just find who you love, through true love's kiss.

~Giselle

Sam: After a whole day of that, you still want to get engaged?

Robert: Those people got married on a crazy romantic whim.

It's not like that with Nancy and I.

Sam: Right, none of that crazy romantic stuff for you, huh?

Robert: We're rational.

We understand each other's strenghts and weaknesses.

Sam: Sounds like building a bridge.

Robert: True love's kiss?

Giselle: It's the most powerful thing in the world.

Robert: Right.

Just because she has on a funny dress, doesn't mean she's a princess.

She is a seriously confused woman who's fallen into our laps.

~Robert Phillip

Robert: You're gonna marry somebody after a day because you fell in love with him?
Giselle: Yes.

Robert: Most normal people get to know each other before they get married.
They date.
Giselle: Date?
Robert: Yeah, you know, date.
You go some place special, like a restaurant, or a movie, a museum.
Or you just hang out and you talk. 
Giselle: What do you talk about?
Robert: About each other. About yourself. About your interests. Your likes, your dislikes.
You talk. 
Giselle: You have such strange ideas about love. 
Robert: Maybe we should do what you would do.
You meet, have lunch, and get married. 
Giselle: Oh, you forgot about happily ever after. 
Robert: Forget 'happily ever after'. It doesn't exist. 
Giselle: Of course it does.
Robert: I hate to disagree, but marriage are a success if they manage not to end.
Forget about happiness.
Giselle: What about you and Nancy? 
You know that you will live happily ever after. 
Robert: I don't know if I'll make it through today, let alone a lifetime. 
That's what I'm trying to tell you. It's complicated.
 Giselle: But it doesn't have to be. Not if she knows.
Robert: Knows what? 
Giselle: How much you really love her.
Robert: Of course she does. 
We just don't talk about it every minute of the day, but she knows. 

 Giselle: This is a very nice place.
Robert: Yeah.
Giselle: And we're eating dinner.
Robert: Yeah. 
Giselle: This is a date. 

 Giselle: You were in love.
Robert: Yeah. That was the problem.
Giselle: How could that be a problem? 
Robert: Because love... the lovey-dovey version that you talk about? It's fantasy.
And one day, you have to wake up and you're in the real world.
Giselle: What made you wake up? 
Robert: Well, she left.
Giselle: I'm so sorry for you both.

 Robert, about Morgan: That's why I don't encourage the fairy tales.
I don't want to set her up to believe in this 'dreams come true' nonsense.
 Giselle: But dreams do come true.
And maybe something wonderful will happen.
Robert: Yeah, well, I forgot who I was talking to.

 Giselle: Edward is coming for me.
Robert: But what if he doesn't?
 Giselle: Why do you keep saying that?
Robert: Because I deal with this every day. 
If a relationship has issues at the beginning, it doesn't get any better.
Giselle: He is coming! 

 What a terrible accident that brought you to this terrible place
with so much sadness and so much pain.
To never be with the one you love.
Doomed to be with another for eternity.
~Queen Narissa

 

  Oh, my. This is a twist on our story. It's the brave little princess coming to the rescue.
[to Robert] I guess that makes you the damsel in distress, huh, handsome?
~Queen Narissa 

Giselle: Is this a habit of yours? Falling off of stuff?
Robert: Only when you're around to catch me.



*****

THE MIST [2007]

Fear Changes Everything

Billy: What is it, Daddy?

 David: Mist?

Stephanie: On the lake?

David: We've had mist on the lake before.

Stephanie: Coming off the mountain like that?

David: Two fronts meeting, left over from the storm, something like that...

Stephanie: You sure?

David: Honey, I'm not the weatherman.

Something in the mist!

Something in the mist took John Lee!

I could hear him screaming!

~Dan Miller

No, don't go out there.

It's the end of days.

~Mrs. Carmody

 

What the hell were those tentacles even attached to?

~David Drayton

Ollie: We've got to discuss how we're gonna stop that thing getting in here.

Myron: Wait, what do you mean getting in here?

You shut the loading door.

Ollie: Yeah, but the entire front of the store is plate glass.

You can't convince some people there's a fire, even when their hair is burning.

Denial is a powerful thing.

~Ollie Weeks

We are experiencing some kind of disaster.

I don't know whether it's man-made or natural, 

but I do know that it's definitely not supernatural or biblical, 

and, no offense Mrs Carmody, but the only way we're gonna help ourselves is to seek rescue.

We're going out.

~Brent Norton

David: You sure there's no way I can talk you out of this?

Brent: David, there's noting out there.

Nothing in the mist.

David: What if you're wrong?

Brent: Then I guess the joke would be on me after all.

David: Want another reason to get the hell out of here?

I'll give you the best one.

Mrs. Carmody.

She's our very own Jim Jones.

I'd like to leave before people start drinking the Kool-Aid.

Mike: Right. Flakier people get, the better she's gonna look.

Amanda: No, I don't buy that.

It's obvious she's nuts.

Look, a few people maybe, but...

David: No, I count 4.

She's preachin' to them right now.

By noon, she'll have 4 more.

By tomorrow night, when tjose things come back, she'll have a conregation,

and then we can start worryin' about who she's gonna sacrifice to make it all better.

You, Amanda? My little boy?

Dan: He's right.

Amanda: You don't have much faith in humanity, do you?

Dan: None whatsoever.

Amanda: I can't accept that.

People are basically good, decent.

My God, David, we're a civilized society.

David: Sure, as long as the machines are working and you can dial 911.

But you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them.

No more rules, you'll see how primitive they get.

Dan: You scare people badly enough, you can get them to do anything.

They'll turn to whoever promises a solution, or whatever.

Amanda: Ollie, plese, back me up here.

Ollie: I wish I could.

As a species, we're fundamentally insane.

Put more than 2 of us in a room, we pick sides

and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another.

Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

I'd rather die out there trying than in here waiting.

~Amanda Dunfrey

Promise you won't let the monsters get me.

Ever.

No matter what.

~Billy Drayton

They're dead... for what?

~David Drayton

*****