Generally props are simply props—however generally they’re silent storytellers. Generally they’re part of the exposition; generally they’re within the scene to absorb the stress, battle, and emotion and change into a vessel for all the pieces that was left unsaid. Inception’s spinning totem, Citizen Kane’s snow globe, and Suspicion’s glass of milk are just some examples of props that carry the narrative.
In Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007), that silent storyteller is the vase. It’s a household heirloom, an early 18th-century Meissen porcelain vase; “essentially the most priceless factor we personal,” as Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) says. When it cracks on this scene, it’s not only a crack within the vase; it’s the primary crack within the story. It’s a bodily manifestation of the fractures which can be about to tear via relationships, households, and lives.
The damaged vase is the hinge on which the story turns.
The Incident
The second occurs fairly early. We meet Cecilia and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the housekeeper’s son, on a sweltering summer time day in 1935. Their apparent attraction to one another, their unstated love, is masked by nervous irritation. As Cecilia, carrying the vase, rushes to the fountain to switch water, Robbie follows. The air between them is tense. He provides to switch the water, however Cecilia refuses. He persists, and through their push-and-pull, the vase cracks. A damaged piece of the vase falls into the water. Much more irritated, Cecilia strips right down to her undergarments, reaches into the water, retrieves the damaged piece, and walks away.
Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), Cecilia’s youthful sister, who’s infatuated with Robbie, watches this scene unfold from her bed room window.
From right here on, Briony, out of her jealousy, spurs a catastrophic misunderstanding, and the damaged vase turns into a visible metaphor for the movie’s core theme of fragile love, class division, and the irreparable penalties of untamed feelings.
The Symbolism That The Vase Carries
Even earlier than the vase cracks, it nonetheless serves as a robust image infused with historical past, class dynamics, and emotional fragility. The vase is a thematic centerpiece of this film.
A Prized Household Heirloom or a Fragile Inheritance
The vase is unquestionably priceless. It has survived generations, even wars. It commemorates the Tallis household’s legacy, their historical past, wealth, and their seemingly secure world. So, when it shatters, it additionally shatters all the pieces it represents. It foreshadows the approaching struggle and the breaks within the household unity that Briony’s actions will trigger. It exemplifies the tip of an period.
A Crushed Bond
At its symbolic core, nonetheless, is the evolving relationship between Cecilia and Robbie. What they share could be very delicate and exquisite, and simply as priceless. So, when the vase is destroyed as a consequence of their clumsy conduct, their evolving love has additionally taken successful due to a second of confusion and jealousy. And identical to the vase, this bond, now with cracks in it, can by no means be completely pieced again collectively.
Briony’s (a Baby’s) Misinterpretation
Within the movie, Briony is an aspiring author. She yearns for dramatic narratives. However she is only a youngster. She doesn’t but perceive the nuances and intricacies of grownup life. Throw in her secret crush on Robbie, and he or she is a strolling spindle able to spin a narrative that can justify her misguided notions.
So, when she sees this incident, she fails to note, not to mention comprehend, the complicated mixture of attraction, frustration, and sophistication stress between Robbie and Cecilia. As a substitute, via her distorted however imaginative (and naturally, black-and-white) interpretation, all she sees is a villain and a sufferer—Robbie because the villain as a result of she perceives his argument with Cecilia and his function in breaking the vase as an act of aggression; Cecilia because the sufferer as a result of she misreads her stripping and diving into the fountain as an act of humiliation and coercion as a substitute of an act of defiance.
And on this “felony act,” the primary piece of proof she collects for her story is the damaged vase. For her, the damaged vase is bodily proof of a battle she has misunderstood.
Futility of Restoration
When Robbie gathers the damaged items and Cecilia jumps into the pond to retrieve a fallen piece, they’re virtually attempting to fix their errors. Later within the movie, we see that crude makes an attempt have been made to attach the vase again into its unique kind. The cracks, nonetheless, are nonetheless seen. Now, the vase—the “damaged” vase—has changed into a relentless reminder of errors that may’t be rectified, deeds that may’t be undone, and destiny that may’t be reversed. The vase won’t ever be the identical.
Echoes of the Fracture
The vase’s symbolic function doesn’t finish when it breaks. It continues to reverberate via reminiscence and guilt all through the story. The cracks within the vase ripple via time, impacting lives, however most significantly, they outline Briony’s lifelong battle for atonement.
Motif of Reminiscence and Remorse
The aged Briony is a profitable and prolific novelist. Throughout an interview about her newest e-book, an autobiographical novel titled “Atonement,” she divulges that the completely happy ending of Robbie and Cecilia’s story in her e-book is fictitious; each had met tragic ends in actuality.
The supply of her lifelong guilt, the purpose she returns to within the hope of creating sense of her life, her determined need to make amends—all of it assembles at one picture: the damaged vase. For Briony, that vase is the design of the reality that she obscured and her sins that can not be cleansed.
Damaged Object, Damaged Lives
Ian McEwan, who wrote the novel Atonement, poignantly used the vase’s imagery to scale the lives which can be affected by Briony’s inaccurate accusation. The path of damaged belief, damaged unity, damaged hearts, and in the end damaged lives that it leaves behind is completely mirrored on this one single picture.
The hasty, clumsy act that prompted the vase to interrupt is the image for Briony’s hasty, clumsy accusation.
Briony’s Novel: The Closing Atonement
All through the story, Briony makes makes an attempt to make reparations for the ache and devastation she prompted. It doesn’t pan out fruitfully—Robbie and Cecilia each die within the struggle, by no means getting the possibility to be collectively. The fabricated completely happy ending in Briony’s autobiography is her ultimate, and fairly helpless, try to provide these doomed lovers the happiness they have been denied. That is the fictional restore for a break that occurred in actual life—the one atonement Briony can now provide.
Conclusion
In Atonement, the vase goes past being a prop and turns into the emotional core and the central metaphor round which the story builds its thematic coronary heart. It personifies the fragility of affection and innocence, the devastating penalties of a easy misjudgment, and most of all, the painful reality that some damages can by no means be restored.
The vase is the story’s silent, ceramic coronary heart, and when it breaks audibly on the display screen, you retain listening to the cracks till the tip.
