Atonement

Atonement is a 2007 war / love period drama directed by Joe Wright, in which young writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) falsely accuses her sister’s lover Robbie (James Mcavoy) of a crime he did not commit. The film follows up several years later, where the audience sees how both Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie are keeping their love on hold until World War II is over. From the poster for the film, the audience can decode the message just by the stars of the film. We see Keira Knightley’s character in despair, what seems as though she is waiting for Robbie to arrive back from war. At the bottom of the poster is James Mcavoy’s character, in a field of poppies, which is entirely blurred out from focus. This alludes to him fighting in the war, although his facial expressions could propose to the audience that he only wants to be with his lover.

Separating the pair is Saoirse Ronan’s character Briony, as well as the tagline “joined by love, separated by fear, redeemed by hope”. Stuart Hall’s reception theory implies that communication is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences. The dominant hegemony here is the phrase ‘separated by fear’, which can be decoded by the audience that Briony is the fear and jealousy that keeps them apart. In the movie, Briony is the person that breaks up the couple in fear that they may end up together. As well as this, ‘redeemed by hope’ could allude to how, at the end of the film, the audience can see that both Cecilia and Robbie have been reunited and are spending the time together that they longed for during the entirety of the movie.

The target audience for this film could be an audience that is made up from both men and women over the age of 15, as that is the age rating of the movie. The reasoning behind the audience being made up by both genders is because of the movie’s storyline. It has been suggested that women like romantic genres more than men, however, more men prefer action and war films more than women. This film could also be targeted at war veterans, as it is their situated culture / cultural experience. People who have experienced the war first handedly may have an opposed reading in contrast to those who may take their knowledge of World War II from the film.