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Atonement (2007)

Director: Joe Wright

Time Out rating

Average user rating

103 reviews

Synopsis

Adapted from Ian McEwan's prizewinning novel, Atonement opens in 1935 on a British country estate, where Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and hersister Briony (Saoirse Ronan, and later Romola Garai) live along with Bobbie Turner (James McAvoy), a servant’s son. After witnessing somethingshe doesn't understand, Briony makes some unfounded accusations; the fallout from those charges extends through WWII and beyond.

Movie review

From Time Out London

The first hour of ‘Atonement’ is an electric experience, during which one feels that Joe Wright (‘Pride and Prejudice’), the film’s young director, and Christopher Hampton, its screenwriter, have a clever grip on the potential of Ian McEwan’s novel to inspire more than just a well-crafted adaptation and a lyrical, intelligent film in its own right. McEwan’s book is about the telling of stories, about the perception of others’ tales and about delivering a lie to a rapt, conditioned audience for reasons of self-preservation: a key character even pleads to be believed with the defence that she saw something happening, ‘With my own eyes’. What greater appeal is there to the potential ability of cinema to twist, mould and convince us?

Wright tightly harnesses these ideas in the first, and longest, of the film’s three chapters. We’re in a smart country house in the late 1930s, just a few years before the war. Cecilia (Keira Knightley) has recently come down from Cambridge; Robbie (James McAvoy), her university contemporary and son of her parents’ housekeeper is dabbling with landscape gardening; and her brother Leon (Patrick Kennedy) is coming to dinner with a friend, the arrogant industrialist Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch). The performances are enjoyable and spot-on: Cecilia’s brittle beauty; Robbie’s educated but tempered confidence; the wily camaraderie between Leon and Marshall.

There’s clearly an attraction between Robbie and Cecilia, yet his connection with the servile classes and her inherited snobbery is holding Cecilia at bay. The class divide persists when Cecilia’s sensible 13-year-old sister, Briony (a terrific turn from Saoirse Ronan) – already dabbling in writing and staging plays at home – constructs her own, deluded fiction around the goings-on between Robbie and Cecilia that see Robbie falsely branded a ‘sex maniac’ and rapist. As with the coming of war to Brideshead, the spell is broken, the Second World War begins and Briony, later as a young adult (Romola Garai) and, much later, as a dying novelist (Vanessa Redgrave) recalls the errors of her youth.

Far from ‘unfilmable’, as some have described it, McEwan’s book offers real opportunities for a filmmaker to thread the perils of storytelling into an epic narrative that bursts out of the attractive claustrophobia of a rarefied world and onto the ravaged, classless beaches of Dunkirk and the fortified streets of London as Cecilia and Briony both, separately, work as nurses during the war and try to deal with their recent past. For the country-house scenes, Wright wisely makes us complicit with Briony’s perception of events, yet such is the strength of the director’s tactics in this chapter – repeated scenes, messing with time, the sound of a typewriter doing its damage on the soundtrack – that when he loosens his approach for a more traditional telling of the narrative for the rest of the film, one can’t help but be disappointed.

Compared to these earlier episodes, the film’s later scenes are more pedestrian and Wright becomes more prone to visual swaggery: a technically impressive but artistically questionable five-minute tracking shot of the carnage at Dunkirk; the nurses marching in formation around a hospital as lights go off above them one-by-one; the rush of water through a tube station as a character drowns – all these grate as one feels that Wright, rather than tackling the pitfalls of storytelling instead succumbs to its audience-pleasing thrills.

A noble, well-made, superbly performed and photographed (by Seamus McGarvey) semi-failure then, but still one that shows Wright to be one of the more imaginative filmmakers of his generation, capable of winning over large audiences with daring endeavours.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2007-09-04 11:19:04

Time Out London Issue 1933: September 5-11 2007

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User reviews of this film

critique said...

Posted on Oct 19 2007 20:49 Exceptionally over-rated. Interesting but not masterful. McAvoy and Knightley are pretty but lack depth and presence. Visually the director was simply showboating, particularly in the second half of the film.

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Sanderson:Haagen Daas. said...

Posted on Oct 19 2007 18:18 Well, where shall i begin. I know at the begginining. First scene low-angle shot. The mise-en-scene really took me by surprise, i nearly had a heartattack, that huge pirranna that not many people noticed ( at the time i was wearing 3D glasses, i thought I was going to see spy kids 3D but obviously the director of this film knew i was coming and threw a bit in for me) anyway Kiera Knightly never really liked kiesh anyway so that fact is a bit out there. 'Under the rainy pale they sat' my favourite line from the film. Im 40 and would like a wife now.

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Simon said...

Posted on Oct 16 2007 16:16 As a 40 something year old bloke, with an evening on his hands while hoteling it in London, I went to see this for something to do. I had no knowledge of the book.. I thoroughly enjoyed this film, taking it as it came. I ended up having had a very enjoyable evening. You probably need to be 'grown up' and in love to really enjoy it. I am, and I did.

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Savvy said...

Posted on Oct 12 2007 12:20 I dragged my wife to this as I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and boy what a superb film, great story - although clearly edited for cinema it was nevertheless well told. Thoroughly enjoyed it and will watch it again.
Definitely one for the big screen as some of the cinematography is breathtaking and cameras are used extremely cleverly.

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Catzille said...

Posted on Oct 11 2007 21:46 I thought the film was the best film I've seen all year and that anyone who slates it aren't broad minded enough or have no conspect of the emotional termoial thousands suffered through the 2nd World War. It's a remarkable piece for a first time director. He's has hit one out of the cricket ground with this one!

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Debbie said...

Posted on Oct 11 2007 20:22 Brilliant movie!! the only person who wouldnt enjoy atonement would have to be a dim witted imbecile

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Peter said...

Posted on Oct 11 2007 10:31 I am a 40 year old heterosexual who enjoys a wide range of films, from Pretty Woman to Deathproof, Delicatessen and Leon. I watched this film on my own, in a full cinema. I managed to hold back tears 3 times. The Polish girls next to me weren't so restrained. I love it and if you have ever been in love, you should love it too. Ate too many chocolate covered raisin though and didn't really need the Ben & Jerrys. I recommend taking your 'other half' to this film. Enjoy

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steve said...

Posted on Oct 10 2007 14:12 what a croc of #### These people saying must see must be mad 3 stars are generous

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Leanne said...

Posted on Oct 10 2007 14:03 Not the worst film I have ever sat through but deff not the best. The storyline is good but its still quite a slow film. My other half slept through half of it which is a bit harsh it isnt that bad but wait for a rental !!!!

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Kirsten said...

Posted on Oct 05 2007 18:03 I disagree will all criticising it, the actors in it showed their best performance, I went to see the film with my mother and we both really enjoyed it, definately a film that appeals to a wide age audience. One that I would love to see winning many awards, truly brilliant.

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mark said...

Posted on Oct 04 2007 19:47 brilliantly done.

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lo said...

Posted on Oct 04 2007 12:34 I had no preconceptions. I don't know the book. And my chap suggested we went to see it. I thought it was very thought provoking and we were still talking about it in the dark. I didn't realise that Bryony thought she was telling a lie really which is not a fault with the subtlety of the film but actually part of its brilliance. The cinematography is marvellous. Anyone who isn't touched by the small essay on Dunkirk has no soul. Those who condemn it as a chick flick must be inferred to have a birdbrain! I was fooled by the lie, I was shocked by truth: and like Bryony, found the truth so overwhelmingly pointless. I thought experiencing this film was a treat: rare, like 'watching' art. I loved that bucket of water 'shock' where the 'quaint' pictures end and we have multi-screened images. Even Bryony's request to stop. We both thought the stiltedness objectionable but is the whole thing not a novel, scenes revisited, reinterpreted, pictures filled out with script, the whole thing is in the end, a fiction, so we are all fooled. It's so clever, so intelligent, to be taken in. For Bryony herself is a fiction. I am reminded of Emily's double frame in Wuthering Heights with Lockwood and Nelly. I was impressed: I will certainly be watching it again.

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Roger said...

Posted on Oct 04 2007 01:50 Must be my northern upbringing. The posh accents and milieu grated and I had to fight an urge to walk out early on. More glue was needed as the emotions werr laid on with a trowel. The ned for incessant typewriter noises did become apparent, but you could hear the stage directions clunk into place when you weren't assailed by the music . You got the feeling of a stock period production and all that was missing from the stately home was the grand ball.
The Director was fortunate to have Saoirse Ronan to hold the thing together and after that splendid performance, Keira Knightley could just coast home and did. I could see people lusting after her, but why anyone should love her was beyond me. But they made sure she was loved. I suppose all the writhing was obligatory, but it didn't advance the plot. Bryony's jealousy was already malignant.
The filming was well done, especially the Dunkirk and London street scenes. And there was the flavour of a Renoir painting in the garden scenes. That 4 engined bomber worried me too and I Ithink I caught the word technology floating about out of time.
Thank God though for Vanessa Redgrave at the end to give us our moneys worth. At least they got that right.

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l.lowe said...

Posted on Oct 03 2007 20:49 I thought the popcorn was bad enough,but the film was worse.

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M Parker said...

Posted on Oct 02 2007 14:17 Not a bad attempt from Joe Wright but nowhere near a great or even very good film. The plot is spun out with endless buzzing flies against window panes and sultry afternoons - which would be more atmospheric if they weren't ruined by the presence of the extremely lacking Ikea Knightley. Her limited acting talent is exposed alongside the far greater efforts of her cast.
Joe Wright is one to watch but Knightley should only ever be doing Pirates of the Caribbean.

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