Movie Review: Atonement

By Ron Wilkinson Dec 9, 2007, 3:11 GMT

Some of the most creative and beautiful cinematography of the year combined with the best performances to date by Knightly and McAvoy and earthshaking work by relative newcomer Romola Garai make this one of the best films out there .

Some of the most creative and beautiful cinematography of the year combined with the best performances to date by Knightly and McAvoy and earthshaking work by relative newcomer Romola Garai make this one of the best films out there

One of the most talented young directors of this decade, Joe Wright’s BAFTA Award winning “Pride and Prejudice” was predictable but excellent.  His latest work, “Atonement” takes “P&P” about two steps further.  Eliminating an intermediate step of film experimentation with a medium-priced production, he has gone all the way to a mastery of directing that most people have to wait several decades to accomplish.

“Atonement” consists of a first part in the snobbish confines of a country estate followed by the WWII trauma and the final reconciliation some four decades later.  The story is told through the eyes of Briony Tallis as a girl of 13, a woman of 18 and as a person nearing life’s end.  At age 13 Briony is the precocious and privileged daughter of solid members of the landed gentry in pre-WWII England.  Budding with immature sexuality, she competes with her beautiful older sister Cecelia (Keira Knightley) for the attention of educated commoner Robbie Turner (James McAvoy).

The scenes of the estate are ordinary, much the same stuff as “Pride and Prejudice.”  But things get edgy when Briony is jealous of her older sister and unsatisfied with her place as a little sister.  Director Wright teams up with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey to paint a picture of a perfect summer setting with a dark side.  Seething teenage hormones commit the worst crime imaginable, and for the worst reason.  A commendable combination of powerful sound, sets and photography take us behind the scenes and make us part of Briony’s transgression.  But she is as helpless as we to stop the wickedness she has started.

Sent away to prison and facing a life of disgrace and humiliation, Robbie Turner goes to war.  This is the worst of WWII, when the citizens of the UK and Western Europe were ground into the mud by the rabid Nazi machine.  Scattered and forced to retreat, the shocked and hysterical survivors of Robbie’s unit find their way to Dunkirk.  Here, several hundred thousand soldiers drew their lottery ticket and waited to see if they would escape in the mosquito fleet of shipping hodgepodge that was summoned to their aid.  The options were death, madness or both.

At this same time Briony, now an 18 year old, has joined the home forces as a nurse in the thick of the worst mutilation imaginable.  In this period Briony is played by Romola Garai, 2004 BIF award nominee for her supporting role in the redoubtable “Rory O'Shea Was Here” starring James McAvoy.  If she is great in the latter film, she truly uncorks one as she performs the bulk of the heavy lifting as the guilt ridden, war-torn and feckless angle of mercy working in the blood-soaked and nightmarish Hades of a field war hospital.

It is during this central portion of the film that Garai pulls off the performance that will launch this film into the inner circle of Oscar nominees.  That is, Garai’s performance and the 5 ½ minute steady-cam super-take through the rarified atmosphere of the Dunkirk estate, its grounds manicured by war machines and its fountains formed of the desperate and terrified cries of the mortally wounded, abandoned to die in a foreign land in the face of seeming total defeat.

The final portion of the film is the monolog by the Briony of advanced years offering her story of the events that shattered the lives of Cecelia and Robbie and offering the best she can do in admitting her own failure to measure up to even the meanest level of human heart.  It will come as no surprise that Vanessa Redgrave nails this part as surely as Dunkirk drove the nails of Briony’s hammer into Robbie and Cecelia.  If her part is too short, it is every inch the stuff of her Oscar winning role in 1977’s “Julia.”

But there is no question that Ms. Redgrave’s finale is brought to near fulmination by Garai’s earlier performance of the younger Briony Tallis and therefore the younger star deserves her fair share of the credit for the earthshaking reconciliation.

In addition to the original, and even courageous, DP work of Seamus McGarvey, the stirring original music score of Dario Marianelli forms the necessary backdrop for excellence for this film.  Nominated for best original score Oscar for his previous work with director Wright in “Pride & Prejudice,” Marianelli’s superb original scores are combined with well-selected classics performed by the English Chamber Orchestra (another re-teaming from “Pride and Prejudice”).  Throughout the film Marianelli’s score is punctuated by the typewriter that eventually spells the truth of Briony’s willful lie, a staccato code that echoes the machine guns of the Great War.

Add to all of this the best performances to date by two of the future’s great stars and some dynamite film editing, and the resulting package is a classic.  Keira Knightley, Oscar nominated for “Pride & Prejudice,” also stared in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Bend It Like Beckham, brings it all back home in her most intense and demanding work to date.  James McAvoy, after winning the BAFTA Rising Star Award as the unwilling protégé in “The Last King of Scotland” (also supporting in “The Chronicles of Narnia”).  Film editor Paul Tothill also rejoins director Wright from “Pride and Prejudice.” 

It is hard to put together a cast, crew and film of this excellence the first time.  Maybe the relatively modest “Pride and Prejudice” was a necessary forerunner to this film.  A romantic drama of the first order, “Atonement” is completely without bloody violence and although deals with tough subject matter is entirely suitable for families with mature teenagers.

Release: December 7, 2007
MPAA: Rated R for disturbing war images, language and some sexuality
Parents Guide: View content advisory for parents
Runtime: 130 minutes
Country: UK / France
Language: English / French
Color: Color