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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

Martin said...

Posted on Feb 13 2008 00:08 I am a straight, 43yr. old, Hispanic male who prefers historical movies. This movie fit my schedule for the day so I saw it despite the fact that friends could not recommend it. I loved it. It was shot beautifully from beginning to end. Kudos to the director of photography. The story made me squirm with discomfort not during the carnage of war scenes but rather the calamity of events in the lives of the likeable characters and made me remember passionate affairs of years gone by. I empathized with the lead and support cast and believed the story as it was being told. During the final scenes, I wept with the sniffling women who sat behind me. Congratulations to all of the brilliant artists who participated in this exquisite production.

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Xavier Roca said...

Posted on Feb 08 2008 13:02 I found the film totally rubbish. The story, the characters, everything is unbelievable. Old fashioned melodrama at its worst (I beg your pardon, Ian!) "sumptuosly" but badly done with ridiculous dialogues (the one with Briony and the french soldier is simply idiotic)! The photography is pure saccarined "spot", as if Kneigtly (who "poses" but doesnt ever act) was always "announcing" some fragrance or other! Compare it with another "oldfashioned" melodrama, recently redone, "The painted veil", from the novel by S.Maughm, with the fantastic duo Norton-Watts as the leads! What a difference! (By the way, I laughed a lot, though not as much as in the deadly funny "Death at a Funeral"! That's why I give it a star.)

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Anonymous said...

Posted on Feb 07 2008 01:00 In response to Laura Haltons comments above...You're G.A.Y x

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tina said...

Posted on Jan 19 2008 08:59 i think this film is the best. especially for people who like to see a well written and drirected love storie. i didn't read the book but i think this is the best movie. iloved this move it made me cry at the end. so I recomend to anyone who loves a good romance story.

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caroline said...

Posted on Jan 19 2008 01:32 I watched atonement today and i felt that it was one of the most amazing and beautiful movies i've ever seen until the present day,
The emotions expressed by the characters are so well done and it made me wanna see it all over again.
The end was so sad but also so perfect for this movie.
I want to read the book now.

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Linda said...

Posted on Jan 14 2008 23:59 This movie deserved the Golden Globe for Best Movie. It was an intelligent TITANIC and a 21st Century GONE WITH THE WIND. Now I plan to read the book and then go see the movie again.

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Oopie said...

Posted on Jan 14 2008 23:57 This movie deserves the Golden Globe. It was an intelligent TITANIC and a 21st Century GONE WITH THE WIND. Now I plan to read the book, then see the movie again.

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jan 10 2008 15:49 Seriously underwhelmed. What's all the fuss about? The book was a great read. The subject matter was not totally to my taste ie a writer talking about writing incestuously. But written with such panache, passion and finesse, it had me in it's thrall. Also there was some debate about whether the second part of the book sustained the promise of the sensual, languid first part. There was a lot of well-researched documentary detail and evidence about war time hospitals and Dunkirk, but the style and tone had changed so much it seemed like a different novel. But it was still McEwan's best book. The film spends 50 minutes on the country house scenes,50 minutes on the war and retreat scenes and tags on 15 minutes for the older Briony to explain finally writing her novel, which is totally different to the proportions in the book.I felt too much filleting of essential material and motivation had gutted the characters as depicted in the film. I was impressed by the beautiful underwater scenes in the fountain, in the river and in the Tube flooding. Also the long tracking shots of the retreat from Dunkirk excellent. I felt thee 3 Brionys were all excellent. I cant muster too much enthusiasm for Ms. Knightley with her cold porcelain looks and cut-glass tones. McEvoy quitted himself well and acted with great presence. As the director had previously done with Pride and Prejudice .

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Anonomys said...

Posted on Nov 25 2007 12:30 Absolutly amazing! I would really reccomend it definetely worth going to the cinema for.

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tazanita said...

Posted on Nov 20 2007 00:51 Only those of you who have depth of soul and know what love can really do in a romantic sense will ever appreciate this film. As in life - the film carelfully exemplifies the myriad of emotional possibilities, the passionate lovers, the naive ignorant child (within many adults), the socially constrained, the confused child,the embarrassing parent and the buoyantly peverse that so often escape the law. So many profound characters in the making and yet the film draws to the main figures esquisitely. To know this story is to love the film, to feel the emotion of this film as painful as it is ; makes you restless for such depth of feeling. Add to this the score and the beautiful ambience of this era so eloquently portrayed - this film has true longevity; it is velvet emotion

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renzarov said...

Posted on Nov 15 2007 17:45 There are too few stars on your rating scheme for this film! Dave Calhoun doesn't 'get it' if he thinks the first 'chapter' is the best or only success, though. It is precisely the varied natures of the pieces & characters, & how we revise our views of events in the light of the ending, which determine McEwan's central thesis that Reality & historical fact are not amenable to our subjective, fictional retellings for purposes of atonement/expiation/redemption, whatever!

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Sutton said...

Posted on Nov 07 2007 13:37 An enjoyable movie that is worth going to the cinema for, as opposed to dvd, though you should still read the book if you get the chance. McAvoy is good and rather surprisingly Knightley is ok. The special affects are exposed a little on the big screen, worth seeing nevertheless.

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rachiliion said...

Posted on Nov 01 2007 12:09 i saw this film a few weeks ago and had been really looking forward to see it. I was really dissapointed I thought it was much too slow and more depressing than teary. I do apreciate however that I am a teenager and may not apreciate this film as much as perhaps an older person, whom which it was clearly made for.

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Sarah said...

Posted on Nov 01 2007 11:45 I tfound this an incredibly moving film. Felt the passionate pull between the lovers, dreaded Briony's betrayal, felt unbearably sad at the final loss. Had read the book and wondered whether it would transfer but the heat of the passion between the two lovers was much more real in the film than the book (where Briony didn't understand and so the author couldn't really report on it) - making the tragedy that much more moving. I agree the Dunkirk scene was showboating - but the rest was intense, and moving. I didn't see the 'slowness' - compared to the almost unbearable drama of the first half it was slower, but only because it was focused on more complicated, painful and evolving events. (And hey - that James McEvoy is hot!)

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lauren said...

Posted on Oct 31 2007 13:00 i tthink this film is great and really interesting and i would definatly advise poeple to go and see it . I had reservations about seeing it as i thought it might be too muchabout war and im not into that but its a great love story and a great film !

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