Atonement – Movie Review
Joe Wright’s Film Stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy
Based on Ian McEwan's Novel, the film is sumptuous and well acted, but ultimately unconvincing.
Joe Wright’s Atonement offers much to pique the imagination. It’s a scenic banquet, traipsing from the impassioned halls of a British country mansion to the allied beach at Dunkirk. Seamus McGarvey’s (The Hours) cinematography is as rich as it is permeating. And would that all women spoke like Keira Knightley, just one day out of the year.
One cannot quibble with the film’s Oscar nominations for cinematography, art direction, set design, costumes and music. And yet Atonement somehow fails in its promise of moving hearts and minds.
The Love Triangle
Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Ian McEwan’s novel, the story opens as young Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) has written her first play, to be performed in front of family and friends, setting the stage for the twists and turns of her overactive imagination.
With all the ripe earnestness of a 13-year-old, Briony has a blinding crush on Robbie (James McAvoy), her family’s gardener, whom her father put through Oxford. But not only is Robbie too old, he is passionately in love with Briony’s older sister Cecilia (Knightley). Against the enchanted backdrop of an English garden, Robbie and Cecilia’s romance simmers, while they engage in a subtle play of manners that underscores class tensions.
One day Briony chances to see the two by the fountain, in a lush scene likely to stay as etched in viewers’ minds as it is in that of Briony’s, as she misunderstands the scene and is awash with suspicions of sexual aggression and jealousy.
When Briony later imagines Robbie is responsible for a heinous crime, her unwavering testimony sends him to prison. Robbie joins the army to commute his sentence, and is shipped off to war. The “atonement” of the title is one which Briony struggles over for her misdeed.
Romance, Class, War and Truth
So far so good. But unfortunately, the film stumbles by juggling too many themes at once – surely all meant to work together like a symphony, but each of which is developed too thinly to be truly effective.
As a romance, we are asked to believe in Robbie and Cecelia’s enduring passion without witnessing its growth. While the fountain scene is memorable, it carries too much weight to support the whole romance.
The beginning of the film plays beautifully as class commentary. But that theme is all but dropped as the story moves on to the horrors of war. This, in turn, is dealt with in a couple of brief scenes which are followed by a sweeping panorama – in a memorable tracking shot robbed of some of its effectiveness precisely because it felt, well, meant to be memorable – as the protagonist stumbles aimlessly across Dunkirk.
Finally, the film attempts to tackle post-modern themes of truth and the nature of fiction, woven into the plot just as a clacking typewriter is threaded into the musical score. But these avant-garde themes have now been handled so often they are no longer avant. Moreover, the questions are proffered, and answered, without scratching much more than the surface.
To be sure, the actors turn in fine performances. Ronan as the young Briony is hatefully believable, and Vanessa Redgrave is notable in a cameo as an older Briony. McAvoy is engaging and earnest. And Knightley’s restrained passion becomes more fetching with each passing movie. Unfortunately, Atonement does not satisfy like her earlier work with Wright on Pride & Prejudice.
While the latter film invites the audience in, allowing it to bear witness as the lovers’ affection flowers and grows, Atonement largely presents love from the outside, and asks the audience to accept it.
Grade: B+
Rating: R
Running Time: 130 mins.
