a child's anger and jealousy ruins lives

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2013)

Keira Knightley and James McAvoy star in "Atonement," a 2007 film directed by Joe Wright, with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Ian McEwan.
Briony Tallis is a 13-year-old girl in 1935 and an aspiring writer. She has a crush on the housekeeper's son Robbie (McAvoy) and at one point, jumps into the river so that he can save her. Robbie isn't amused - in fact, he's very angry, and Briony realizes that he'll never love her. From her bedroom window she sees her sister Cee (Knightley) and Robbie fighting.
The Tallis family is being visited by cousins whose parents are in the process of getting a divorce, twin boys and their 15-year-old sister Lola. Briony's brother Leon (Patrick Kennedy) brings home a very wealthy friend, Paul (Benedict Cumberbatch) for dinner. He meets the twins and Lola, and it's obvious that Lola thinks he's cute.
Robbie meanwhile has written a letter to Cee, discarding the first draft which is very sexually explicit, and replacing it. He asks Briony to deliver it. Briony reads it; she has the wrong letter, in fact. She thinks Robbie is a sex maniac. When Robbie appears for dinner, Cee and Robbie have a confrontation which leads to them having sex up against a bookcase. Briony walks in on them.
While everyone is at dinner, the twin boys disappear, and everyone goes out to look for them. Just as Briony comes upon Lola, a man runs away from her prone body. Lola has been molested. Briony accuses Robbie.
Thus begins the ruination of lives in this beautifully directed and photographed film. Robbie goes to prison. His mother (Brenda Blethyn) is devastated. In 1939 he is given a chance to either stay in prison or enter the army, which he does. Cee's father was going to finance his going to medical school; he is now cut off. Cee knows Robbie is innocent and walks out on her family and becomes a nurse during the war. Briony (now Romola Garai) does the same.
The question becomes, how much did Briony understand when she lied -- did she really believe her sister was being attacked by Robbie and that he was a sex maniac? Or was she jealous of her sister and Robbie and acted out of anger? The audience needs to decide.
This film is filled with sadness and longing, with an idyllic beginning that ends in horror, and at the end, a final twist. As Briony must live with her burden and desire to atone, we are stuck with the results of her act and the havoc and heartbreak it causes.
Keira Knightley is the perfect '30s young beauty here. In the beginning, she is a gorgeous woman from a wealthy family with probably no end of gentlemen callers - it's all ahead of her. Later she not only has to deal with the effects of the war but of the man she loves going to prison.
James McAvoy does a wonderful job with a much showier role -- again, in the beginning, one is aware of his glowing youth and of him being in love; then he is dragged off to prison and ends up in the trenches.
I must mention Benedict Cumberbatch in a small but pivotal role here, as I watched this film because of him. He's extremely dashing as Paul, and very charming. The film was made three years before he hit it big with Sherlock.
The audience has to decide if there was any atonement as well as process the last half hour or so of this film, which comes as a surprise.
An enchanting film showing the destructive power of a lie.