Reuniting much of the crew of the successful cinematic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, director Joe Wright brings a more modern romance to life in Atonement and again uses Keira Knightley as his leading lady. A darling of this year’s awards processional, I found Atonement engaging and engrossing to watch, but frankly not worthy of the total praise being heaped upon it. As opposed to Pride, which is a tale about love found, Atonement is a story of love lost because of the destructive nature of secrets and the power of perception to make us see things that aren’t there.
During a hot summer day at an English estate in 1935, the pre-existing sexual tension between young Cecilia Tallis (Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the son of one of the Tallis’ servants, boils over. They share a tryst in the mansion’s library after Robbie gives Cecilia a sexually explicit letter and it’s witnessed by Cecilia’s younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan). When the 16-year-old daughter of a family friend is raped, Briony is the sole witness and she accuses Robbie. Everyone, but Cecilia, believes her.
Five years later, Robbie’s been conscripted into the British army and is one of the thousands of British soldiers awaiting evacuation from Dunkirk ahead of the advancing Nazis. Cecilia, meanwhile, is working in London as a nurse having sworn off her family as a result of Robbie’s imprisonment. She meets up with Briony again (now played by Romola Garai), who is also training to be a nurse. Slowly, it seems, Briony has come to realize that what she think she saw on that night years earlier may not be the facts of the matter.
The story is complex with many nuances and characters, but it’s all kept perfectly balanced by screenwriter Christopher Hampton. The script moves along fairly well, but there are, at times, a question about whose story this is: Briony’s or Cecilia and Robbie’s. These questions are answered in an intriguing final twist in the end, but I have to say that I was not entirely convinced by it. Spoilers? Don’t bet on it. I’ll just say that even before the characters fates were truly revealed the ending ringed false and the justification for it seemed hardly in keeping with a movie that deals in harsh realities.
However, I love the journey the movie takes to get there and I love the performances. McAvoy proves himself as a romantic lead, carrying both the dashing debonair qualities and the brooding intensity factor. He’s smartly matched with Knightley who’s radiant in the part, but frankly she isn’t given much to do.
Ronan as Briony is interesting; she kind of evokes that classical image of the little sister, the tag along that’s adept at making a general nuisance of herself. But then on the other hand she’s portrayed as kind of calculating; how much her actually realized that she had fingered the wrong man, I wondered, or is it that the older Briony is punishing herself by making it seem there was more to her false accusation that simple confusion?
The film is also technically impressive as well. The beautiful cinematography by Seamus McGarvey enhances the story’s emotional pallet capturing rich colours during the summer of ’35 set first act that starkly contrast the more subdued war scenes later on. The Dunkirk sequence especially deserves mention as Robbie wanders through the scene in a marvellous tracking shot that makes Saving Private Ryan’s Normandy look like an island in the sun. The score by Dario Marianelli also intrigued me as it incorporated typewriting sounds into the music as a kind of percussion. Quick-minded viewers will also pick up on the clues that these auditory signposts mark.
Atonement was good, but I do have my reservations. Nevertheless the story is both engrossing and heartbreaking and will without a doubt leave the viewer satisfied.
