Movie Review: Atonement

7/10

It's been a long day of work for me here, what with all the posts from earlier and finally getting someone to give me a day's work on Monday. At least I always have my blog as a cheapish outlet for sounding off.

Right... Atonement.

Firstly, I haven't just given it a lower mark than, say, Michael Clayton, because Keira Knightley's in it. That may have had an effect on my enjoyment (she is the Colatterlie Sisters of movies as far as I'm concerned) but after rationalisation the point has been restored.

The acting is patchy. Miss Knightley is her usual vapid clothes hanger self, James McAvoy does a pretty good job of a tough part, and most of the supporting cast are ghastly stereotypes (poshies, housekeepers and the stern but generous matron). The real star of this film, and its central character is that of Briony (who, unlike the big names, is tiny on the films cover and posters) who is a budding writer and is seeing very edited highlights of the other two leads flirting and falling in love. Everything I enjoyed in this film (saving Dunkirk) was Briony based, from her first misunderstanding to sitting by a dying man's bedside.

So good is the casting of this character that she goes through three ages in the film (Saoirse Ronan plays her at 13, Romala Garai at 18 and Vanessa Redgrave at old age) and all of them are convincingly the same person physically. Of the three, despite the difficulty and obstacles, Ronan is the standout performance. Of course, she gets the best bit of the movie to herself but she seizes it with both hands and succeeds in utterly destroying the other child actors (seemingly hired from a remake of The Box Of Delights) followed swiftly by outperforming all the other actors on screen. Good job, young lady!

Her story is done extremely well, and the 18 year old Briony is convincingly haunted by the decision she made about in act 1 and we see the consequences of in act 2.

Tragedy is a hard thing to do properly. Do it too quickly and it becomes trite, do it too slowly and it becomes tiring. Then you've got the risk of coming over as Oscar baiting cynical costume drama tripe ).

While Atonement doesn't quite feel THAT contrived, the film for me fails to provide a good sense of convincing tragedy. It comes on too strong with how horribly unjust the whole situation is, and then double barrels you with it AGAIN AND AGAIN right up to the end. Like Titanic before it, every compounding of tragedy on tragedy, injustice upon injustice, just ground down what little involvement I had left and I was actually quite grateful when the Redgrave bit ended so I could go back to thinking about the bits that I enjoyed so much earlier on.

It's a film, then, of two halves. This is ironic since the whole film centres around a divide. The love across divide story has been around for thousands of years. Nothing too bad about that since billions of stories use such predicaments as their starting point. This particular divide is a class one - Keira Knightley's Cecilia is in love with the housekeeper's son.

However, no-one really seems to mind much - this is the early twentieth century after all and things class war-esque were starting to shift inexorably to our current virtually class war free existence. When it does matter though, all those feelings of class superiority come flooding back and for some inane reason the word of a small upper class girl is worth more than even the most basic police investigation is. Realistic? I couldn't possibly say, but this is the absolutely crucial conceit of the film - that Briony genuinely holds the future of her sister and her lover in her hands and does exactly the wrong thing.

I have no problem with this conceit. It's utterly essential that Briony realises she misused the power she had when she could have done the right thing - otherwise there is no Atonement to name the film after.

Nah - my real problems with the film start after this first section (which I really enjoyed, leading lady aside) when we move into the "War" section. This feels like, intentionally I am sure, a very different beast of a film. The famous tracking shot of Dunkirk is marvellous and really quite affecting - especially having worked as an extra and knowing that only one guy has to not be paying attention and the whole thing is screwed. Great work to the 3rd and 4th ADs on that one!

The film decides at this point to pummel and pummel and pummel its point into you: these two lovers should be together. BUT LOOK WHAT THE BAD GIRL DID!

We know... we saw, guys!

Every moment does this, every hallucination of the very peaky Robbie, every cow faced sigh from Keira is calculated to hammer the point home again and again. BAD GIRL! BAD GIRL!

Damn it! We Know! Give the audience some credit!

Look, the story I am interested in (Briony's) is being distracted from by these two repeating themselves over and over. Instead of heightening the tragedy, it had the effect on me of blunting it, of leading me to the conclusion that rather than being great tragic lovers, Robbie and Cecilia are actually a little self indulgent, and that is the wrong emotion to induce in your audience.

I know in this case I am in the minority. I probably have a heart of stone. I know many of you will disagree until you're blue in the face and that is your right, but Atonement's stars actually nearly ruined the movie for me. Not because it was Keira and James specifically, but because the laws of movie making require your marquee names to be on screen as often as possible.

If half the scenes with Robbie and Cecilia were gone and we had the film basically as Briony's perspective of events I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but the sheer star wattage undermines the main thrust of the picture, that one decision that destroyed everyone's lives forever, even Briony's. I should be honourbound at this point to say that I have not read the book on which this is based, and multiple narratives in a book will surely work much better than trying to shoehorn them into the screen.

So, is it any good? Yes. It's very good. As stated above, I have certain issues with the film-makers decisions, but most people should enjoy it. It's beautifully shot and the production design is excellent, if you're into your historical accuracy the horses fate on the beaches of Dunkirk will impress you too. It's a good film.

Now, this is the reason for the 7 - I am egomaniacal enough to think that maybe some people worldwide will agree with me over my primary issues, and since these reviews are my opinion I'd have thought you'd allow me that conceit. So the film is very good (a 7 these days still means very good) but these issues meant it couldn't, for me, get anything higher than the 7 I gave it.

But hey,what does my opinion matter? If you loved it, great! Why not tell me why? Comments and opinions below as always.

A

P.S. If you don't know who Collaterlie Sisters is, (shame on you!) she was the business presenter on Chris Morris' biting satirical classic spoof news programme, "The Day Today", and the quote from him on handing over to her in episode one was "turn off the monitors I don't want to see her face" and when it cuts back to him he puts down an UZI he was inexplicably holding. I hope that explains that reference.
She basically had a monologue that was random words and numbers strung together ("The one was up an eighth against the fifth, across a third" sort of thing)