Şeyma Günsel Çelen

Assist. Prof. Dr. Defne Demir

Cinema and Literature

February 5 2021

Fidelity and Postmodernism in Cinema

This essay is written for Cinema& Literature course, consisting of two parts. First part
includes the analysis of Atonement (2007) in regards with fidelity in movie adaptations.
Second part introduces Posmodernism and its essential elements, then analyzes and elaborates
the movies Gone Girl, Atonement, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Fidelity in the Movie Adaptation of Atonement

The movie Atonement (2007) directed by Joe Wright, is adapted by the novel
Atonement written by Ian McEwan in 2001. The movie adaptation is discussed for fidelity.
However, before starting to analyze, one needs to know what adaptation and fidelity means in
cinema.

Linda Hutcheon states that “adaptation is repetition, but repetition without replication”
(34). It means, a literary work of art can be adapted to cinema, however, while doing that, a
director does not have to copy everything as exactly how it is present in the literary text. She
further claims that “the act of adaptation always involves both reinterpretation and then
recreation” (Hutcheon 35). And it also means that a director is not welcomed to only do what
is in a literary text. She/ he has to reinterpret the text, and recreate the story into the medium
of cinema.

Fidelity is being loyal to the adapted literary text while executing a movie adaptation.
Fidelity contains thematic faithfulness, as well as a plot. However, staying faithful to the plot
of a story does not mean that a director cannot or must not add his/ her original ideas into the
movie. Oiginality is welcomed in a faithful text as long as it is not very far-fetched from the
original text.

Before analyzing the movie Atonement in regards of fidelity, one must know what the
directors and his team thought about the process of adapting the novel into the cinema. It is
stated as:
 “He and screenplay writer Hampton remains forthright about their intention to be
faithful to the so-called “spirit” of the source text they are adapting. [Director] Wright
states: The book works, so we tried to be faithful to it. [He and the screenplay writer,
Hamptons] kind of had faith that the film would work too if we stuck to the truth of
the novel . . . We kept the book by our side throughout the whole process.” (Briggs 19
2012, 345)

It is clearly understood that the director’s and the screenplay writer’s aim is to stay faitful to
the novel. They have recreated this movie adaptation by staying faithful to the novel and by
using their creativity in some parts of the movie without breaking the original plot of the
novel.

The movie’s storyline, theme, and plot contains the same things present in the novel.
Briony, Robbie, and Cecilia have the same characteristics as in the novel. Briony’s ruining the
life of Robbie’s and Cecilia’s are shown in the same methods. The plot does not change in the
film. Storyline and plot in the film are highly loyal to the novel. Moreover, the novel
Atonement is a postmodern novel which is rich in postmodern elements like unreliable
narration, distortion of reality, metafiction. In the film, the same elements are not only
unchanged, but also visually and successfully emphasized through the medium of cinema.

However, being faithful to the original literary text does not mean that a director
cannot use his creativity. In fact, his creativity enriches the movie adaptation if he manages to
utilize creativity correctly. Using creativity correctly and accordingly means that, the director
must utilize artistic imagination while sticking to the novel. There are significant scenes in
which director John Wright has able to do so. For example, the sound of Briony’s typewriter
enhances the metafiction element used by Ian McEwans in his novel. Moreover, at the end of
the movie, Briony is being interviewed while he confesses that the events does not happen in
real life, but only in her novel, and the lovers’ being together at a seaside. Even though the
first scene is not in the novel, it is present in the movie. In the novel, Briony herself explains
all that. But the director elaborates the scene and uses it effectively in the medium of cinema
to emphasize Briony wrote the novel, and she is extremely guilty. Likewise, the lovers’ scene
at the beach is not present in the novel but director creates this scene deliberately to show the
audience Briony’s use of metafiction. The director brilliantly adds some scenes absent in the
novel by using creativity. However, while adding them, he is very well aware of the fact of
staying faithful to the novel.
 In conclusion, in regards of fidelity, the director of Atonement stays faitful to the
original literary text and while doing that, he adds creative scenes into the movie without
changing the theme, the plot, or the characteristics of the novel.

Elements of Postmodernism in Gone Girl, Atonement, and The French Lieutenant’s

Woman

Before analyzing these three movies in lights of Postmodernism and its elements, one
must be familiar with the Postmodern movement and the devices used within Postmodernism.
Origin of the movements dates back to the years after WW2. When World War I ended,
people believed, that there would be no more war, but it was proved to be wrong when World
War II broke out, with so many atrocities, and deaths. Even so, after all these years, the war is
still called “history’s most savage and devastating war” (BBC). Because of the horrendous
outcomes of the war, people has lost their sense of reality and truth. They could not know
what was real or not anymore, from such a trauma. Accordingly mindset of people and
scholars living in that era has changed, and a new movement called Postmodernism emerged.

Within postmodernism, new techniques and elements, such as metafiction, unreliable

narrative/narration, distortion of truth, and postmodern anti-hero, emerged. These elements
and how they each relate to the three films mentioned above are analyzed following the next
sections.

Postmodern Elements in Gone Girl

The film Gone Girl is directed by David Fincher in 2014. The movie encompasses
many postmodern elements in itself. The film has a protagonist, and an anti-hero Amy. She is
a great example of a postmodern anti-hero. The notion of an anti hero is explained: “an anti-
hero is as flawed or more flawed than most characters; (s)he is someone who disturbs the
reader with his weaknesses yet is sympathetically portrayed, and who magnifies the frailties
of humanity” (Morrell). As an audience, one has details about her life from her childhood, to
her adulthood. Amy is a psychologically wounded individual, which starts with her parents’
writing a series of books called “Amazing Amy”. In the movie, while talking to his husband
Nick, Amy says that “Amazing Amy has always been one step ahead of me” and gives
examples of her childhood, for example, how she has left a sport branch, and the next thing
the parents did was to make the fictional, amazing Amy the best in the branch. This behaviour
of her parents made Amy traumatized. As a reader, we symphatize with her, because she is
portrayed as a human being with problems; not superficial, but real problems. Therefore, an
audience can have symphaty for Amy. Moreover, she is a woman who is cheated on with
another woman, with which an audience can associate. However, these problems and traumas
happening in her life are not a complete justification for her horrendous deeds. These events
in her life are shown in the movie to strengthen the concept of a postmodern anti-hero,
because she is not a completely evil person, not a good person. She is not black, or white. She
is in the gray area. Her motivation behind her deeds to get the person she loves back. Her
journey as an anti-hero is not for the good of society, but herself, which also accentuates
postmodernism. Lastly, Her not having any friends other than her fake friend Noelle implies
that she is an outcast in society, shows that she is a postmodern anti-hero. Along with her
character as an antihero, it is never clarified whether she is 100% in love with Nick or not,
because in postmodernism, there is no ultimate truth. Inbetweens are more favoured.

Amy deceives every single person in the film and the audience. She distorts the truth,
she creates a fake diary whose entries date back a year prior. She has worked meticulously to
twist the truth, and she succeeds in doing that. To make everyone believe her husband
murdered her, she plans everything ahead. The plan that she has worked on for so long works
and pays off. First half of the movie is mostly told through her diary entries, therefore,
examples of distortion of truth are given accordingly. She writes an entry in her diary on how
she wants a baby and Nick does not. Throughout the first half of the movie, even Margo is
suspicious of her own twin brother because of Amy’s plans. Along with these examples,
many other scenes with distorted reality can be found in the movie. The diary is what gets him
arrested. Through her diary, she reflects Nick as a very vile person so that everyone can
believe her creation of a distorted reality. The policewoman did not believe that Nick would
be guilty, but after seeing these entries of hers, even she is convinced that Nick is the reason
of her disappearence because she wrote in her diary that she was afraid of her husband and the
things he may do, that he pushed her and that he had a bad temper. The diary is at utmost
importance of her’s journey in distortion of reality. However, other than diary entries, more
examples are present. Before running away, She tells, and also make Nick tell everyone that
Nick is the one who is not ready for a baby, when it is actually her that does not want a baby.
She tells his parents and Nick that Tommy raped her and officially claiming him as a rapist
but the audience later learns that she staged it, Tommy is innocent (but again, there is no
ultimate truth). Just like in Tommy’s case, she staged that Desi has imprisoned her, and she
ran away by “managing “ self-defense. It never happened. She is the one to run Desi’s arms
for help after she is robbed by two people and she used Desi to find a reasonable explanation
and excuse for her missing, making it seem like she has been kidnapped by him. She fake
befriended Noelle to make her plan work, even if she hates her. Because upon lying to Noelle
that her husband’s physical violence and their extreme problems in marriage, she has proved
the point: Nick is dangerous and she must have killed her. Through lying to Noelle and using
he as a witness, she has distorted the reality, the reality where Nick did not become that
violent.

For the first half of the movie, an audience claims Amy as a poor, innocent woman
missing and Nick as the man who is the suspect of her missing. But it is understood that Amy
is the unreliable narrator of all the events happened through her diary. She has done
everything, blurred every truth, and lied to revenge her husband. She has lied about Tonny
and Desi. She has lied about her not wanting a baby and her husband’s pushing her, calling
her bitch. She has lied about being pregnant. She has lied about her missing and she has put
Nick in a position of a suspect. And because she has done all of these, thus, is an unreliable
narrator and audience witnesses that as the movie progresses, the audience cannot be sure of
nearly anything she says due to her unreliability. Audience becomes skeptical about what is
true or wrong because they have been deceived from the beginning to almost ending.

In the film, audience encounters metafiction through two different works of art. Amy’s
parents have a series of books called “Amazing Amy”. Through this book, the parents write
about the things they want the ‘real’ Amy would have done, and criticise her in that way.
They see their daughter as a commercial. “The parents exploit their child’s life and
commodify an idealized version of their offspring’s identity in order to gain authorial success,
where the girl becomes a “muse,” stripped of her own identity, without agency” (Szarvas).
They make the amy in the child story to do things she could not do in reality. Moreover,
During the press-meeting, they say “Please help us find Amazing Amy” like she matters just
because she is the character of the story. The second example of metafiction in the movie is
Amy’s diary. Amy creates this fake diary to punish Nick for cheating on her. She creates a
story, the story made up of lies. Upon her creating the fake diary, she hits two birds with a
stone. She criticizes her husband, and she can revenge for his cheating by causing the
accusation of murder. Her diary is one of the most influential tool in the movie, because “the
main concern of metafiction is precisely the implications of the shift from the context of
‘reality’ to that of ‘fiction’ and the complicated interpenetration of the two” (Szarvas).

In conclusion, the movie Gone Girl is very rich of postmodern devices and elements
used in it. Amy is a postmodern individual. She is not totally evil, she is heartbroken because
she is cheated, even if her method is extreme; however, she is not a good person either. She is
the true depiction of the postmodern anti-hero. In addition, through analyzing her fake diary,
three more postmodern elements (metafiction, distortion of reality, unreliable narrative) is
present in the movie.

Postmodern Elements in Atonement

Atonement is a movie directed by John Wright in 2007. The film holds 4 postmodern
elements: metafiction, unreliable narrative, distortion of reality and postmodern anti-hero. The
first element to be elaborated is metafiction. The film is told through Briony’s novel, which is
called “Atonement”. The postmodern anti-hero Briony is a highly imaginative and creative
individual. In the very first scene of the movie, audience is welcomed into her room where
she is writing a play for her brother’s homecoming. She has been a passionate child about
writing. She ruins her her sister and her sister’s lover life by a false accusation. To be
redeemed, she decides the write the novel Atonement to give the lovers the appropriate ending
they deserve. They do not die at the end of her book like in real life, they live happily ever
after. Her creation is what brings two lovers eternally in her book. She feels extremely guilty,
so she give them their happy ending. As a viewer, at the end of the movie, the audience
understands that there is metafiction, which highly accentuates the effect of postmodernism in
the movie because, as a postmodern element, metafiction wants to reshape or recreate new
reality and fiction just as Briony changed the past through the novel, and the film is told
through Briony’s novel.

. Distortion of reality in the film is used through the characters of Lola and Briony. Lola
is assaulted by a man the night her brothers disappeared. She is very well able to see the face
of her assaulter Then, Briony sees the scene. She also sees the face of the rapist. Lola does not
say the name, however, Briony implies that the man was no one other than Robbie. Lola does
not disagree. Nevertheless, audience later learns that it was Paul who raped Lola. The girls
recognized his face, they knew that it was Paul, but they did not say anything about it. Instead,
Briony framed Robbie, officially accused him that he was the one that raped Lola. They
distorted the truth, and made everyone –other than Robbie and Cecilia- believe their false
reality. Before the incident, when they were at Briony’s room, Lola and Briony called Robbie
“a sex maniac” because of the wrong letter he gave. Moving on with Briony’s distorted realiy,
when Robbie and Cecilia are arguing by the fountain, Briony sees the scene from her
bedroom window. She thinks that there was something weird between the two, thinks Robbie
was forcing her sister to undress, and she was surprised how Robbie made her sister do that.
After that scene, Robbie gives Briony the wrong letter to hand it to Cecilia. Upon reading the
letter, Briony is shocked from the word written: “cunt”. Her entire opinions about Robbie has
changed, and since the audience watches the film according to Briony’s poimt of view, one
can feel uncomfortable. The letter was the breaking point for Briony. From then on, she
begins to misunderstand everything, sometimes deliberately, sometimes indeliberately. When
the two lovers are having consensual sex in the library, she catches them, feeling petrified,
because she thinks Robbie is assaulting her sister Cecilia. She has formed a fragmented reality
in her head, and from then on, everything accumulates. After the library scene, there is a
family dinner scene with also Robbie being there. The lovers are sitting next to each other,
and are shy and shocked about what had just happened at the library.Whenever Robbie tries to
talk, Briony just interrupts him and satirizes, because for her, he is guilty. She distorts the
reality of what actually happened between the lovers. Fortunately, the audience is very well
aware of the fact of distorted reality, because the scenes mentioned above are shown in two
different perspectives: Briony’s, and Cecilia’s and Robbie’s. And, finally, even though she
has witnessed that the man who raped Lola was Paul, she testifies that it was Robbie, and she
helps them put him into jail by falsely accusing him. This is the most destructive distorted
reality in the movie, which is the downfall of Robbie and Cecilia.

Unreliable narration is very well present in the movie. The scenes that are mentioned
above are told in two subsequent perspectives, and as the audience, one gets suspicious of the
events. In one scene, the lovers are passionately having sex, in the other scene, Briony sees
Robbie is raping her sister. Which one is true? Is Briony right? For a little while, the suspicion
continues. But as the story unravels, the audience gets to see the differences of the
perspectives, and decide what or who they will believe or not. Moreover, during the ordinary
plot of the movie, some contradictory events happen. For example, Briony goes to visit
Cecilia to apologize, and sees that Robbie and she are living together happily and healthily.
However, before that scene, Robbie is shown in the heart of the war zone, fatally sick and
pale. How is that possible? The suspicion rises. Audience can sense that something is not told
right, but are not 100% sure. It is only revealed at the end of the movie that, the scene had
never existed because the lovers are dead. She created that scene in her novel, the movie has
this scene because it is created from the novel that she had written. These scenes are the
results of director’s use of unreliable narrative through Briony.

Briony is a truly postmodernist anti-hero regarding all the things she has executed. She
is an anti-hero because she has ruined Robbie’s and Cecilia’s life because her individual aim
mattered to her the most. She misinterprets the things happen between her sister and Robbie,
therefore, she did the right things in her point of view through lying and sending him to jail.
However, when she is older, even if it will never make Robbie come back to life, she feels
extremely regretful and to make up for her deed as much as she can, and she writes the novel
to attribute their real, deserved ending in her head. She is a post-modern antihero because the
audience cannot see Briony as a solely evil or a mere good person. She has made the terrible
mistake; but she was a highly imaginative, creative child at that time. She could not have
imagined that her decision would cost Robbie’s life, and when she was older, she wanted to
give the lovers their earned happy ending. However, just because she regrets her decision now
and has done it when she was a child, what she did cannot be justified because Robbie is
dead. And in postmodernism, one does not have to have all the answers perfectly. She does
not have to be ultimately good or ultimately evil, that is the complexity and beauty of
postmodernism.

The effects of postmodernism in the movie Atonement is clearly evident. The movie
surpasses strong elements of postmodernism. Through Briony’s personality, one can face the
postmodern anti-hero. Her writing the novel from which the movie is told is the metafiction
example, and lastly, her describing the events when she was a child contributed to the two
postmodern elements, unreliable narrative and distortion of reality.

Postmodern Elements in The French Lieutenant’s Woman

The French Lieutenant’s Woman is the film directed by Karel Reisz in 1981. Just like
the movies analyzed above, the film is analyzed through four postmodern elements:
postmodern anti-hero, metafiction, unreliable narrative, and distortion of reality.

The postmodern anti-hero element in the movie is discussed through Sarah Woodruff.
She is the true postmodern anti-hero because she has lied about being the French lieutenant’s
woman. She was not his “whore”, she has made up this reality, because she did not want to fit
into the society’s norms. She did not want to get married. The only thing she wanted was to
become free of the society’s norms. She did not accept the rules and mandations of the society
in which she lives. To become free, she has created a false reality. As a result of this made-up
reality, she has become the outcast of the society. As a postmodern individual, she is
marginalized from the society. In addition to that, her morals are questionable, because she
has an affair with an engaged man. Moreover, she is indecisive and uncertain during her affair
with Charles. She falls in love with him, but leaves him because her freedom matters to her
more.. She is not evil, or an ultimately good person. She falls in love with Charles, however
he is engaged, bot it does not make him an evil individual. These characteristics of her is what
makes her the postmodern anti-hero in the movie

Sarah Woodruf is an unreliable narrative. She is known as the French lieutenant’s

woman. She does not do anything to correct the situation. In fact, she wants the situation to be
accepted as it is, because that is her way of escaping the rules of the Victorian society. Sarah’s
unreliable narration and the distortion of truth is intertwined in the movie. The only person
knows what has actually happened other than herself is Charles. However, even Charles does
not know the entire truth. Sarah only gives him the glimpses of truth. After they have fallen in
love with each other, they meet in Exeter Hotel. And when they have sex, it is understood that
she was a virgin. She hides, and manipulates the truth. Moreover, when she agrees to wait
until Charles come back from Lymes after breaking up with her fianceé. However, she does
not wait for Charles, she runs away to a place where Charles will not know for three years;
she wants to be free. To sum up, all these events mentioned above clearly show that Sarah is
the unreliable narrative.

Distortion of reality in the movie is present through Sarah Woodruf and Anna’s and
Mike’s relationship. As an unreliable narrative, Sarah distorts the reality on her own will. She
does not want to tell the truth, which would make her conform the society rule’s, because of
that, she distorts the reality. Everyone believes that she is a “whore”. She only tells Charles
that it is not what actually happened, however, the truth she has given Charles is limited. Even
though she tells Charles the truth, she still conceals the truth to some extent. Because of her
distortion of reality, no one in the town wants to be seen with her, or to hire her. For example,
Mrs. Poulteney is reluctant to hire Sarah. It is all because Sarah’s distortion of reality. In
addition to Sarah’s act, distortion of reality element is also seen in Anna’s and Mike’s affair.
As both married individuals, they are seen as work friends by their families. In the garden
party in Mike’s house, Anna tells his wife that she envies her. When she asks her the reason,
she tells because her garden is very beautiful. Just like her character Sarah, Anna also distorts
the reality, along with her partner in crime Mike.

There is another movie, taking place in the Victorian Era, in the movie The French
Lieutenant’s Woman. Anna and Mike are the leading roles in this movie. Being a metafiction,
the movie in which Anna and Mike plays both has parallelism and contrast. The most blatant
parallelism between the movie where Anna and Mike acts as Victorian Era individuals, and
the actual movie is that both Anna and Mike, along with Sarah and Charles are having an
affair. The most blatant contrast is that, the movie counterpart ends with the happy ending,
and the actual film ends with the sad ending, where Anna leaves without Mike. In addition to
these contributions, metafiction element also opens a new way of Victorian Era criticism.
While hanging out with Mike in a hotel room, Anna reads a newspaper and says that many
Victorian women have to be prostitutes because they do not have any other choice, however,
in th movie counterpart, audience learns that this is highly condemned. In conclusion, the
metafiction element in the movie both contributes to our understanding and interpreting the
relationships these two people have, and it contains the criticism of a particular era in history.

The movie The French Lieutenant’s Woman is interpreted through the elements of
postmodernism. Metafiction, unreliable narrative, distortion of truth and postmodern anti-hero
present in the movie is further analyzed and discussed. As a result, this movie is classified as a
postmodern movie with the elements evident in it.
 Works Cited

Atonement. Directed by Joe Wright, StudioCanal, 2007. Netflix.

www.netflix.com/watch/70059993?trackId=14277281&tctx=-97%2C-97%2C%2C
%2C%2C.

Accessed 1 Feb. 2021

Cartmell, Deborah, editor. A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation. 1st ed.,

Blackwell Publishing, 2012.

Gone Girl. Directed by David Fincher, Regency Enterprises, 2014. Amazon Prime.

www.primevideo.com/search/ref=atv_sr_sug_9?phrase=gone%20girl&ie=UTF8.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2013.

Morrell, Jessica Page. “Defining and Developing Your Anti-Hero.” Writer’s Digest, 23 Apr.

2008, www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/bullies-excerpt. Accessed 3 Feb.

2021

Szarvas, Réka. “‘MAD HOUSEWIFE AND COOL GIRL: GILLIAN FLYNN’S GONE
GIRL

AS FEMINIST METAFICTION.’” Americana E-Journal, AMERICANA - E-Journal

of American Studies in Hungary, 2018, americanaejournal.hu/vol14no2/szarvas.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Directed by Karel Reisz, United Artists, 1981.

ugurfilm.com/the-french-lieutenants-woman/

WW2: History’s Most Savage and Devastating War.” BBC,

www.bbc.co.uk/teach/world-war-two-historys-most-savage-and-devastating-
war/z6pjgwx. Accessed 3 Feb. 2021