The "Atonement" House: Ancient English Archetexture

England 1935, I can only imagine how it looked. The buildings the cities and towns, having never been to England my self. Most of the ancient buildings in England still stand today, and are used as residences and office buildings. The architectural history plays a very important role in this story, in both the novel and the film. In the novel author, McEwan takes the time to make great detail about his visual of the home in which the Tallis' live. The detail about the water fountain, the pool, the vast open fields, and the rooms in the house are very key, especially when developing the scenes. I think that because McEwan played so much on this house and some of the key parts in the story take place here, it was more challenging for the director Joe Wright to find the right house for the film, luckily he did. In most films a set is built for the movie specifically, in this film majority of the first half of the story is filmed on location at an actual house in England. The story takes place in the 1930's and the latest architectural style of homes in that time would have been a part of the Jacobethan Style.Which in ways, the houses also look similar to the Victorian style home ( 1840-1900AD), the Baroque architecture style(1600-1830AD). The crew on the film were lucky to find a home that had everything described in the novel set in once place, whom ever lived in that house, when it was first built was most likely a very wealthy person. Sometimes when reading a novel the words are only words until we can visualize them. This location and the house really completes the story of Atonement because the property and all of the detail shows what wealthy people lived like in this time era, the house gives us a story of the importance of architectural growth in the mid 1800's to early 1900's.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/garden/13atonement.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobethan