It’s a while since I read the novel, so I couldn’t swear to it, but my impression is that the film is pretty close to the book. Certainly the basic structure is the same, the majority of book and film is devoted to Briony as a girl during the one fateful day in 1935, the middle section is split between Robbie at Dunkirk and Briony as a nurse, then there is a brief coda with Briony as an old novelist. Some of the detail is different (most noticeably, I don’t think the old Briony section is treated as an interview in the novel), and some things are passed over more briefly in the film (the scene at Lola’s wedding to Paul Marshall is, I am sure, more prominent in the novel). But essentially this is about as true an adaptation as you could hope to find. Continue reading
