The book club meets again

Joe Wright moved seamlessly from a BAFTA-winning career as a television director into feature films with “Pride & Prejudice” in 2005. His follow-up, like “Pride” starring Keira Knightley, takes on an only slightly less daunting source than Jane Austen: Ian McEwan’s enormously popular novel “Atonement.” The director doesn’t face these challenges alone, however. His creative team has stayed largely intact throughout his career. ¶ “We’re all kind of jamming together,” said Wright. “We trust each other to come in at the right moment. And we know each other’s weaknesses as well, which is quite important, so you can cover for each other. Well, they cover for me. They’ve got my back, to use an American phrase.” ¶ Award-winning cinematographer Seamus McGarvey shot Wright’s first short 13 years ago and has rejoined the Wright team for “Atonement,” which opens Dec. 7, and beyond; among the more senior confederates are production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer (art direction Oscar nominees for “Pride”), who have collaborated with Wright seven times. Others include editor Paul Tothill and Oscar nominees Jacqueline Durran (costumes) and Dario Marianelli (music).

Wright, McGarvey, Greenwood and Spencer sat down at the director’s temporary home in the Hollywood Hills (where he’s staying while they work on his next film, the Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. drama “The Soloist”) on a remarkably windy evening to discuss the abundant pros and imagined cons of working together so often.

“Joe might say what you think is just the daftest -- I’m putting it politely,” said Greenwood, “but you know that somewhere in what he said there’s a nugget of absolute truth about whatever it is we’re trying to achieve.”

“Also, we have a shorthand where I can say, ‘It’s like that,’ and Sarah will know what I mean. And Seamus and I are beginning to have that as well. I can say, ‘Get your swizzle stick out,’ and he knows what I mean,” Wright said, eliciting a laugh from his cinematographer.

One motif running through “Atonement” -- in which a young girl’s misunderstanding in 1935 has a tragic effect on the future lives of those around her -- is the sound of a typewriter, as an important theme is the imagination of a writer. To that end, the clacking of keys and carriage returns even pop up in the score.

“I think Joe had this idea a long time ago -- it was one of the very first things that came up,” Marianelli said by phone from London. “Joe is like a volcano; he’s got one idea per second. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with it. I went into the studio and sampled every key on typewriters -- I wrote seven or eight pieces with them.”

“The great thing is, and crucial to working on Joe’s team, is this democracy of ideas,” McGarvey said. “People are encouraged and required to put into the creative pool.”

HIS OWN METHOD

It may surprise some who enjoyed the casual feel of Wright’s “Pride & Prejudice,” which took a classic down from the shelf and made it something living and breathing, that one ingredient the director finds distasteful is the acting style known to many as “naturalism.”

“The style of performance in ‘Atonement’ is very much an homage to a kind of filmmaking, pre-Lee Strasberg,” said Wright. “And I think that, arguably, naturalism is the death of drama. So I was interested in developing a style of performance that was hearkening back and therefore moving forward. So we looked at a lot of the films of Celia Johnson and Noel Coward and those British films. I don’t think Method actors have a monopoly on the truth. I find Marlon Brando sometimes very, very mannered.”

Wright wrangles unusually long prep time for his films, including two weeks “in camera” planning shots for “Atonement.” However, such preparation wasn’t a factor in one of the film’s signature sequences, a five-plus-minute tracking shot through the insanity of the British evacuation at Dunkirk.

“That was the one thing that Seamus and I actually didn’t plan because it was daunting,” said Wright, setting off a group giggle. “Sarah took it on and planned the set around that shot; Seamus took on the whole camera aspect; the Steadicam operator, Peter Robertson, gave sweat and blood for it, and we practically hospitalized the man. The actual cast then invested their hearts into it, and a thousand extras on the beach” and the surrounding community were involved, Wright said.

“That’s why I find that scene quite emotional now. Because of all those minds focused on that one moment and all doing the best they can. It was more like a happening than a shot; it was a special moment.”

Wright routinely brings in pieces of Marianelli’s scores to play for atmosphere during filming.

“There was an incredibly exciting moment on the first day of shooting ‘Atonement,’ ” Wright said. “The very first shot was little Briony, having completed her play, and I had the piece of music we were using for that scene. We pressed ‘Play’ on the iPod and the cameras rolled and we called, ‘Action,’ and out came little Briony, and there was the whole film, ready-made in front of us.”

“And it gave us all goose bumps,” Greenwood added. “Everybody on the crew understood the film we were making on the first shot, the first day.”

“It’s about pre-visualizing a movie,” said McGarvey. “ ‘The Soloist’ is in that head right now, and it’s up to us to mine it.”