Atonement
I confess that I found it far-fetched that a film starring Keira Knightley would be on anyone’s Top Ten lists, or even get nominated for something. From a purely technical standpoint, Atonement is astonishing - all kinds of gorgeous and subtle tricks of light and camera movement give emotional thrust to our leads’ experiences. Briony is 13 when Cecelia and Robbie are finding their feelings for each other, and a combination of relatively minor betrayals and misunderstandings balloons into an epic and seemingly irreparable separation.
At times the story folds back on itself, first to show Briony’s experience, then that of Cecelia and Robbie. The film is not trying to be Rashomon but the key misunderstandings are best witnessed without all the information. It’s structurally lovely. The film sags in the middle with all the collective misery and hopelessness, then resolves in a surprising and (I’ll just say) doubly satisfying way. The sagging part, I think, is meant to lend an epic scale to what is, after al, only thwarted romance. Atonement occasionally looks and feels like an old classic Hollywood movie, with sweeping shots of one stricken face - but it’s also modern and intimate, crawling inside Briony’s eye to filter out everything but her girlish expectations.
Cecelia, you may have guessed, is played by Knightley; her Robbie is played by the extra-dishy James McEvoy. His developing brand of restrained intensity (see: The Last King of Scotland) serves him well here. Knightley is scrawnily beautiful and contradictory and mainly an emblem for Briony’s immature dreams of womanhood. McEvoy is a stronger actor than Knightley, but they work well together on screen.
Briony is played by Romola Garai as a young girl, Saoirse Ronan as a guilt-ridden young nurse, and Vanessa Redgrave as an older, wiser woman. She always retains that girlish haircut and a flapperish feel to her clothing, with muted colors and huge blue eyes that take in so much and understand so little. Only Ronan was singled out for an acting nomination, but I argue that Garai has the burden of developing the character based on her actions and intensity.
It is a tale that would play out very differently today; crimes imagined and real bubble more easily to truth’s surface thanks to modern techniques and mores. The wartime setting adds to the bleakness of the separation, the hopelessness of recovery, the direness of reconciliation, if one is even possible. It sounds much more depressing than it is - somehow the film retains a feather light touch even when wallowing in guilt and angst. The movie will trick you too, if you let it, and I hope you will. As a technical achievement, it’s one of the better films I have seen this year. The story is old-school overblown and yet it is played so sincerely you hardly notice its old-fashioned fire. It’s good.
MPAA Rating R-disturbing war images, language, some sexuality
Release date 12/7/07
Time in minutes 122
Director Joe Wright
Studio Focus Features
