The scene where an elderly couple are hugging on the bed while water rushes underneath depicts owners of Macy’s department store in New York; Ida and Isidor Strauss. They died on the Titanic in real life. Ida was offered a seat on a lifeboat but refused so that she could stay with her husband saying, “As we have lived together, so we shall die together.”
This scene was so heartbreaking and so sweet.
“I told James to perform that walk as if he had a bit of a hard on. Sometimes my directions, my notes to the actors are very intellectual and sometimes you just have to come out with a very basic, simple note like, ‘play this scene with a hard on’. “
Dir. Joe Wright, Atonement commentary