Atonement?!
Question: When Robbie and the two colonels are walking alone, he comes across--for lack of a better word--a pile of dead bodies that belong to what looks like young schoolgirls. They seem to have each been executed. I was confused as to why they weren't blown up first and why were they killed. The scene was not in the book so I had no reference.
Answers: When Robbie and the two colonels are walking alone, he comes across--for lack of a better word--a pile of dead bodies that belong to what looks like young schoolgirls. They seem to have each been executed. I was confused as to why they weren't blown up first and why were they killed. The scene was not in the book so I had no reference.
I saw the movie last night and was wondering the same thing. I have been doing searches to figure out what happened because I didn't think the Germans had gotten close enough or serious enough before Dunkirk to kill a bunch of young girls (or nuns?) with what looked like point blank shots to the head.
I didn't get the symbolism at all other than that Robbie is still compassionate toward young girls even though a young girl's mistaken accusation has gotten him into the army and the war.
I didn't like the premise of Atonement. A young girl is confused by sex and makes an accusation and should atone for it? What about the chocolate millionaire who actually raped Lola? What is his culpability? He is an adult who rapes a child and then keeps quiet while an inferior is taken off to be punished. What sort of atonement will he serve?
I guess they just included that scene to express how awful the war was, and Robbie wasn't desensitized to it. If you remember in the beginning of the second part of the book, Robbie comes across a leg in a tree, and he goes and throws up. But that part was cut out of the movie, so I guess they used his discovery of the school girls instead.