I must read the book.... because the movie made no sense

Rating: 4/10 (13 April 2008)

The first 45 minutes of this movie were quite good and after that it went downhill fast. I loved the premise of a young girl's lie bringing people to ruin. So our movie starts with a young, precocious girl named Briony Tallis spying on and envying her sister, Cecelia. When Cecelia takes up with the housekeeper's son, Robbie, Briony catches them in the act which fuels her jealousy and sets the scene for Briony to later accuse Robbie of raping a young house guest. What a web is spun driving these two lovers apart! But you could see the cracks early on. I did not altogether buy that these two love each other. The only testimony to it was their speaking the words as they copulate against a bookcase. Not exactly the stuff of love. No mention was ever made about the young girl who was raped until much later in the film. She was an interesting character, wise beyond her years but still just a girl. I found her rape disturbing and it was completely swept under the rug. Our hero, Robbie, is quickly carted off to jail and from there, the story turns into a mess.
Once Robbie trades jail for war and the sisters Tallis become nurses, the whole plot is fantastical. The Dunkirk scene for me was a token war scene that allowed the director to paint a surreal portrait of war that makes no sense. I couldn't decide what the hell I was watching...was it the director's love for his way-too-long money shot or was it Robbie's hallucinations from his septicemia? Shooting horses, soldiers riding a ferris wheel, singing in a gazebo - utter nonsense. And where on earth did the black British soldier come from?
At the end we learn through an elderly Briony, who has finished writing her novel Atonement, that she has put her own spin on events because her sister and Robbie both died during the war. I realized the last hour and a half was a complete waste of time save the performance of Vanessa Redgrave, which was superb.
Did Robbie and Cecilia really meet at the café after he was released from jail? Who knows? Was there a house by the sea? Who knows? Did the lovers really keep in touch? Who knows? Did Robbie wander the war torn French countryside with a cockney and a black man? Who knows? How much of it was Briony's version of events and how much of it happened? Who knows? The pseudo-artsy plot hopping was distracting and the lack of character development made it impossible to care what happened to any of these people. The director opted for gruesome imagery to symbolize the potential outcome of lying - murdered school girls, burned bodies, shell shocked soldiers, missing limbs and most interesting of all, a two room flat next to a pig sty (the ultimate depiction of how far an upper middle class girl has fallen).
The director spends a good deal of time on the war when it would have been far more interesting to see how Briony's lie changed her through the years. Did she testify against Robbie at trial? What were the parting words between her and her sister? What did she do before she became a nurse? How did she learn of her sister's death? Did she ever confront Lola and Paul? The finest scene in the movie was Briony sitting with the dying French soldier and this alone is why we should have seen more of Briony's personal atonement. I hope the book is better.