TV director Joe Wright brought style and a bit of gritty realism to his hit adapation of Pride & Prejudice. As a follow-up, he's tackling another literary heavyweight, though of more recent vintage, writes Donald Clarke
When three years ago, Joe Wright set out to direct his agreeably grubby adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, he could expect a certain degree of accommodation from the Jane Austen appreciation tendency. After all, if his P&P were not up to scratch, there would, surely, be another one along in a few minutes.
Ian McEwan's Atonement offers a different sort of challenge. Since its publication in 2001, the characteristically sinewy book has gone on to become one of the most revered British novels of its era. Yet it seems unlikely there will be another film version for another few decades or so. Muck this up and Joe might find himself burnt in effigy outside every Waterstone's in the land.
"I'm a bit of a dunce, really," the director, handsome, hairy and 35, tells me. "I don't really read because of my dyslexia. I honour film more than I honour books, I think. I would never try and remake Lawrence of Arabia or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But, when I accepted the job of directing Atonement, I was aware of the responsibility. When you start working you tend to forget about it, though."
McEwan enthusiasts can lay down their weapons. Wright's version of the book is a fine piece of work. Starring Keira Knightley as a posh young thing who stays true to James McAvoy, a smart guy from a less humble background, despite his suffering a devastating social setback, the picture manages the enormously tricky business of sticking close to the source material while never forgetting its responsibility to the great god Cinema.
One sequence in particular demonstrates Wright's determination to ostentatiously exploit the tools and conventions of film. The middle of the picture is dominated by a hugely complicated, unbroken five-minute shot that takes us round the chaos of the evacuation to Dunkirk during the second World War. "Be in no doubt," the shot seems to say. "We are making a movie here." This is not any old bland literary adaptation.
"Yes, but I think we were also trying to find cinematic equivalents of what Ian was doing with the prose," Wright says. "There is conspicuous writing in the novel. The writing itself is almost a character in the novel. So this is conspicuous film-making. That shot is Brechtian in that it calls attention to the film-making, but I hope it doesn't take you out of the drama."
The film also seems somewhat self-conscious in the way it encourages its characters to adopt the vowels and consonants of English actors from the 1940s. Gossiping together in a canteen, Knightley and McAvoy sound eerily like Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter.
"That came out of a question we asked ourselves: What was acting like before method acting came in? That kind of naturalism is now the accepted way of acting and I think it's bulls**t. I wanted to challenge that. There is this convention where you drag up incidents in your past to get at the emotion. But that ends up being about you, rather than the character. I want the actors to use their imaginations and invent character. That's why Saoirse is so good."
Saoirse Ronan, the teenage Irish actor who plays Knightley's younger sister, does indeed deliver a quite stunning turn. Asked to perpetrate a devastating act of delusional vindictiveness, she somehow manages to retain the audience's interest and empathy.
"With all actors, regardless of age, you need to feel like you freely love them," Wright says. "So I only ever cast people who I grow to love for who they are. Saoirse has a thimble-full of life experience, so all of her performances have to come from the imagination. For a scene in which she had to cry, she would slowly built up to it and by the end we would be devastated. I would yell 'cut' and we'd all be in tears, but she'd just smile and say: 'What's for tea?' That comes from having an imagination."
As you may have gathered, Joe Wright is a confidant young fellow. Born and raised in north London by parents who ran a puppet theatre, he admits that his career adviser, puzzled by the young Joe's lack of direction, felt that his best option in life might be to become a postman. Instead he headed for art college. His original intention was to move on to film school after graduation, but he soon realised that one more student loan might cripple him forever.
Wright attempted to make it as a director of pop videos, but found it hard to resist the temptation to inject narrative and emotion into the work. Eventually, a smart producer in the BBC caught sight of some of his experimental short films and sensed potential. Three drama series followed and, with Charles II: The Power and the Passion, he discovered a talent for reimagining the past.
"I had done about 14 hours worth of television," he muses. "Which is a fair bit, but not a huge amount. I am not quite sure how I got to direct Pride & Prejudice. Charles had been quite successful and when the call came I knew I had to grab this one."
He takes a puff on the roll-up cigarette and gazes out the window.
"I had one simple idea that seemed obvious to me: let's cast people of the right ages. This was a story about people falling in love for the first time. In earlier versions you had people in their 30s prancing around pretending to be virgins and that was stupid. The point about Elizabeth Bennet is that she's a virgin. I think that idea got me the job."
Pride & Prejudice, which set Knightley among a dozen other theatrical luminaries of assorted ages, went on to garner fine reviews and pick up four Oscar nominations. Bringing more grit and mud to the party than one generally expects from an Austen adaptation, this P&P was unquestionably the work of a director who was not content just to stamp his card and push the usual buttons.
Still, he was not the first choice for Atonement. The project was initially handed to Richard Eyre, director of Iris and Notes on a Scandal, but other commitments intervened and Wright was drafted in as a substitute. Putting McEwan, a famously tidy writer, together with Wright, an enthusiast for calculated disorder, now seems like an inspired decision.
"Life is messy and I do try to make things that have a bit of mess to them," he agrees. "In terms of styling and shots, I do try to do that. I also try to bring a bit of chaos to the structure. I hate that three-act rubbish. Life needs a bit of mess to it."
The producers will also be delighted by the publicity that comes from Wright's status as one half of a celebrity couple. He is currently dating Rosamund Pike, Keira's glacial blonde co-star in Pride & Prejudice, and is often required to smile at idiots on red carpets.
"I don't really understand all that stuff," he laughs. "It has been strange. Every time Ros and I turn up for a friend's film or a grand dinner they ask for a photo. So Ros stands there looking beautiful and I stand there feeling fat and fat lucky enough to be going out with this woman. Then the photographers say 'Ros, can we have one with just you in it?' and I have to shuffle off and stand with the publicist."
Poor man. It still sounds more fun than being a postman.
Atonement opens next Friday
