Atonement

CinemaSerf7/10

Feb 9, 2024

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"Cecilia" (Keira Knightley) has fallen for "Robbie" (James McCoy) - a man well down the social ladder from her family and their stately home. It's love, though, and the young man is doing his best to fit into their privileged world by studying (at their expense) at Cambridge with a view to becoming a doctor. Meantime, following a scene that she has completely misinterpreted and the reading of a letter that wasn't any of her business, their behaviour is being rather unhealthily scrutinised by her thirteen year old sister "Briony" (Saoirse Ronan) who soon becomes fixated on the couple, on destroying the couple and to that latter end she concocts a story that not only achieves her goal, but sees "Robbie" wrongly incarcerated for a fairly heinous crime. The war intervenes and that gives the lovers a chance to recalibrate their feelings for each other whilst the now more mature "Briony" (now Romola Garai) with whom her sister has become estranged, is having a serious crisis of conscience and travels to London to be both a nurse and to take responsibility for her behaviour five years earlier. This is a complex and detailed piece of cinema and McAvoy delivers really well as the honest and decent lad caught up in a web of deceit and envy. Knightley is less effective - but still contributes well enough as the truth is finally known before an inevitable tragedy strikes. It's a story about the ramifications of a lie, but it's also about people's abilities to love, forgive and to judge. Loyalty might only be skin deep but regret lasts for ever, and ever might not be so long as you might hope. Dario Marianelli has created a masterful score to accompany this story and the writing and Joe Wright's subtle direction ensure we steer well clear of the melodramatic and the sentimental as the denouement looms and Vanessa Redgrave appears for a quite fitting final mea culpa. A straightforward British period drama this isn't and it's well worth a watch on big screen for the a cinematography that marries the rustic charm of rural England with the horrors of bombs, bullets and blood poignantly.

**Atonement (2007)** _Directed by Joe Wright_ The story is powerful and emotional, based on Ian McEwan's novel about a single catastrophic lie and its decades-long consequences. The screen adaptation by Christopher Hampton is as strong as, or stronger than, the source material. This is an incredible, maybe perfect, screenplay brought to life by Joe Wright with a visual style that's utterly unique. Wright doesn't just film the story; he creates a cinematic language for it, using long takes, precise compositions, and that extraordinary Dunkirk tracking shot that moves through chaos with impossible grace. The continuity of the three actors who played the aging Briony, from Saoirse Ronan as the precocious child who tells the lie, to Romola Garai as the young woman seeking redemption through nursing, to Dame Vanessa Redgrave as the elderly novelist still wrestling with her past, was astonishing. You believe completely that you're watching the same person at different stages of life, carrying the same guilt, the same need for atonement that can never quite be achieved. This is a huge accomplishment of Joe Wright's direction, and of course of the three actors who inhabited the role with such precision that the transitions feel seamless. The film takes place within a period when the meaning of class has begun to erode and evolve. Robbie (James McAvoy) is the housemaid's son, educated by the Tallis family, loving Cecilia (Keira Knightley) across a class divide that's starting to crack but hasn't broken. World War II accelerates that dissolution; the old order is dying, but it still has enough power to destroy lives. Briony's lie works because the authorities want to believe it, because a working-class man accused of assaulting an upper-class girl fits their worldview too perfectly to question. What haunts about Atonement is the recognition that some things cannot be undone, that guilt carried for a lifetime doesn't necessarily lead to redemption. Wright crafted a film that understands this with devastating clarity, refusing easy absolution or false comfort. It's a masterpiece, one of the finest literary adaptations ever filmed.