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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

Erasmus said...

Posted on Sep 20 2007 16:37 Your reviews from Time Out of London do make me wonder who the reviewer is related to ?
Unfilmable ? ?
Entertaining but no classic. Leaning towards the pedestrian with few if any surprises in the story.
But for its entertainment value worth a look.

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carrie said...

Posted on Sep 20 2007 12:20 It was good, but not brilliant. Keira Knightley is beautiful but her acting is wooden on occasions, unlike James McAvoy and Sairose Rowan who were far more engaging. It's a film that makes you think and I'm glad I've seen it - but would I watch it again? No. It's not a classic for me.

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steph said...

Posted on Sep 19 2007 17:06 This was one of the best films Ive seen in a long long time. True to the book in every way, and the photography wa s absolutely stunning - what a wonderful cameo performance by Vanessa Redgrave, she held the audience in the palm of her hand for just 7 riveting minutes - will go again.

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millie said...

Posted on Sep 19 2007 14:52 I LOVE MIKE

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Laura Halton & Natalie Higson said...

Posted on Sep 19 2007 14:43 We loved this film so much that we are going to watch it again! One of the best films I have ever seen, its really emotional and you just get lost in the film. Make sure you get your snotty hanky ready. James is gorgeous!!!! Laura is so jealous of Keira in the big orgy sex scene. A must see!!!!! Be there or be sqaure! Those who dont rate this film well obviously dont have the intelligence and emotions to deal with this film!!!!!!

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Marie said...

Posted on Sep 18 2007 12:01 Beautifully filmed, the scenery was good. My friend and I were engrossed throughout the film, and it ended too quickly. Slightly disappointed with the ending, it seemed a little rushed. Still confused about some of it, will have to read the book I think. James McEvoy is great in it, and so is Keira (could do with putting on a bit of weight though).

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joy said...

Posted on Sep 17 2007 20:09 I was really impressed with the directing and the acting of this film the sound of the typewriter added to it in my opinion the scenery was brilliant be nice to have more films that are of the same genre

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goldiefloss said...

Posted on Sep 17 2007 10:51 I have not read the book and went along completely in the dark, and that is where I stayed until the very end. It was just an OK film. During the first 45 minutes or so, I nearly walked out, bored. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had ready the book and went a bit prepared but surely you shouldn't have to! It was just OK.

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alison said...

Posted on Sep 16 2007 14:03 a fantastic film, beautifully written,directed and acted and the scenery is superb!go see it ,1 for the girls and boys.be warned -take a hanky though...!

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scruffybobby said...

Posted on Sep 15 2007 20:51 Atonement is an intelligent, well acted and visually beautiful fim, but it left me cold. I found it hard to get invested in any of the characters and as such cared less than I should have about their fate.
It's a consistently interesting but uninvolving film. Full of intellect but lacking emotion. Maybe that was the point?
In response to Lithick's comment that a novel must be read first before seeing a film adaption - Nonsense. A filmnaker cannot assume much less rely on an audience's prior knowledge of the characters or situations. One must work independently of the other. If a film fails to adequately answer the questions it throws up, it may be the fault of its makers. It may indeed be a simple lack of understanding on the part of the viewer but that is an issue between them and only them. Unfamiliarity with the source material is irrelevant.

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J Carter said...

Posted on Sep 15 2007 11:53 I hated it. Contrived and slow. It is a poor film if it only makes sense if you had read the book. The music for the Dunkirk scene is beautiful and if there are going to be any Oscar nominations they should be for Romola Garai. Go and see Breach instead. A better film all round.

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marks mum said...

Posted on Sep 14 2007 23:12 I want my mint tea darling, I enjoyed it very much and I dont want to go on this internet thing [take this as a plus!]

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mark oxley said...

Posted on Sep 14 2007 23:05 An orgy of sentimentality: but it did make my mum cry lots.....mmmmmmmm

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Greg hughes said...

Posted on Sep 14 2007 01:32 Litchick, I have to say, considering your nom de plume, your writing seems a little stilted.
And, um, don't you think perhaps you should go and see the film before you make your lofty pronouncements?

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kevin said...

Posted on Sep 13 2007 23:30 Wow, there are some films that make you laugh and some that make you cry,this film will tug at every emotion you have in your body.You will leave the cinema exhausted and deeply affected by masterpiece. Hopefully the film will be rewarded with many awards.

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