1) Writers are dangerous and untrustworthy.

2) The movie is not as good as the book (although James McAvoy and Keira Knightley are very pretty to look at).

I was interested to see how they would adapt it, because the primary theme in the book is the act of writing and being a writer and what that means. The tragedy that happens comes about because Briony is a writer. She sees things, she notices, and she tries to make sense of it by building a story around it. But the secondary story of the lovers takes over in both the book and the movie, which is again all part of the point. Fiction is more powerful than real life. It seemed almost impossible to me that they would find a satisfactory way to reveal the ending. I can't think of a better solution than the way they chose, other than not adapt the book at all, but I didn't really like it, either.