1. Cecelia - Atonement (2007)
Shocking for its connotation for the character Cecilia, the story as a whole and its focus on a real life tragedy, Atonements short scene depicting the disaster at Balham underground station on October the fourteenth 1940 is one of the most shocking things to ever occur on Londons underground in cinematic history. The narrative of Atonement follows young Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan playing the thirteen year old Briony and at eighteen she was portrayed by Romola Garai) and her confused feelings towards Robbie (James McAvoy). Robbie and Brionys sister, Cecilia, develop a sexual relationship during the film but what Briony perceives of this behaviour is Robbies aggressive sexuality imposed on her sister. Briony is unsure and disgusted over what she sees from the pair; the sexual tension in which Cecelia seemingly is forced by Robbie to get into the water of the fountain, the crude, erotically charged letter Robbie sends for Cecilia and the two having sex. Although Briony sees these actions as Robbies sexual deviancy, in fact each occurrence is part of the twos burgeoning sexual attraction towards each other. Briony, whilst searching for her run-away cousins, comes across her teenage cousin Lola (Juno Temple) apparently being raped. Although they cannot be sure who the attacker was, Briony blames Robbie out of spite for his actions towards Cecilia. Robbie is arrested and sent to jail whilst Cecilia disowns her family for having Robbie arrested. Three and a half years later, Robbie is released upon the condition that he goes to war, he and Cecelia renew their love before he sets off despite only having a brief reunion. After the war Briony apologises to the pair, whom are now married, yet they state that she can never be forgiven. In the final part of the film, an elderly Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) talks about her new book (Atonement) and reveals that the ending, where she apologised, is fiction; a twist of Shyamalanic proportions. She explains the truth, that Robbie died of septicaemia whilst waiting for extraction from Dunkirk, the two never married or saw each other after their brief reunion. She then tells of her sisters fate, in which the London underground is shown, Cecilia drowned in the Balham tube station bombing during the Blitz. The implication of this is that Briony blames herself for the couples separation and also their deaths, for if she hadnt have lied they would never have been torn apart and would have been happy. The event is a real life tragedy where a German bomb pierced the water-mains and sewers above the civilian air raid shelter which flooded the underground killing over sixty people. The scene which depicts the death of Cecilia shows Cecelia in the shelter before portraying the wall of water hurtling down the staircase of the underground towards those inside. Her body is shown floating in the depths of the murky water; a poignant and shocking scene for Briony was never able to apologise to Robbie and her sister, her only way to forgive herself of the over burdening guilt was to reunited Robbie and Cecilia in fiction hoping to give them a happy conclusion.
