Saoirse Ronan and Ian McEwan Find Broken Shell of Love On Chesil Beach

By Katherine Monk

What is it about Saoirse Ronan and novelist Ian McEwan that sounds such an eerie peal? In Atonement, she played Briony Talis, a 13-year-old with a vivid imagination and writerly ambitions who tells a tragic lie. In On Chesil Beach, she plays Florence Ponting, a young bride and musical talent who tells a sad truth.

They are two very different characters, but something unites them. Their mysterious female forces pull men into their watery wake. Briony sucks them into the briny through perceived innocence. Florence Ponting punts them into romance before shipwrecking on the rocks of Chesil Beach.

Ronan’s wide blue eyes are an ocean of unknowns. She reflects all the ripples of McEwan’s studied meditations. She essentially embodies a timeless, abstract, haunting quality that perfectly captures the spirit of McEwan’s prose.

As a result, watching On Chesil Beach feels a lot like watching the sea. Clear skies fill with clouds. Storms settle in or suddenly relent. The same standpoint can reveal a hundred different shades in the space of a few hours. And the tides are always turning.

Ronan’s wide blue eyes are an ocean of unknowns. She reflects all the ripples of McEwan’s studied meditations. She essentially embodies a timeless, abstract, haunting quality that perfectly captures the spirit of McEwan’s prose.

Florence Ponting is the kind of woman we tend to like. She is kind and genuine. She is articulate and talented. She also seems confident enough to make choices in life, and to let herself fall in love.

When she meets Edward Mayhew (Billy Howles), that’s exactly what she does. Florence blooms with affection for the smart kid with the wavy hair and a bursting sense of pride for getting good marks. She grows even fonder of the slightly goofy and awkward Edward once she learns of his mum’s head injury, and subsequent personality change.

Taking us through the story with a subtle lapping of narrative waves, we keep going back to Chesil Beach, when Edward and Florence face the great current of the times. It is the early 1960s, and the sexual revolution is starting to flood the midlands of society. New ideas of empowerment are afloat.

Edward and Florence embarked on their maiden voyage together. But an iceberg awaits.

Director Dominic Cooke makes the most of his theatre background in the way he keeps the dramatic core of the film present, though entirely unspoken until the climax.

Edward and Florence embarked on their maiden voyage together. But an iceberg awaits.

Likewise, Ronan and Howles, who also star opposite one another in the current version of The Seagull, adapt their dramatic skills to something that is entirely cinematic in the use of facial expression, yet perfectly theatrical in the intonation.

It’s important that we feel the dreamy border, because the movie — and the story — plays like one of those chronic loops of regret: A defining moment in a relationship played out over and over again, as clear as the day it happened, and entirely unchangeable.

It’s history. Yet, it shapes every moment we face, every single day. Wave, after wave, after wave of experience may erode the rocks of hurt, but the memory is forever etched in our hearts.

It’s important that we feel the dreamy border, because the movie — and the story — plays like one of those chronic loops of regret: A defining moment in a relationship played out over and over again, as clear as the day it happened, and entirely unchangeable.

McEwan picks up a handful of sandy memories and lets them run through his fingers, almost absentmindedly. It almost feels numb — until the pain becomes too sharp, and we go through the whole thing over again.

McEwan’s work always feels scarred, yet clinically sound. His characters have a romantic spirit that’s conquered by pragmatism, and eventually surrenders to the banal. Watching Howle and Ronan move through the cycle of true love with conviction and terror is thrilling — like a fall from a great height — until the painful landing.

That’s when all the ugly stuff comes out in explosive bursts of truth, leaving little more than empty shells of affection and the tendrils of a crushed soul washed up On Chesil Beach.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, May 25, 2018

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