Great - Many Will Love It But I Never Will

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2008)

This was a well-wrought film. The actors, pacing, and dialog all worked to create believable and engrossing relationships and interpersonal dynamics. In relative terms, the film is faithful to the book.
** Warning Spoiler Coming ** I have two gripes. One is with the logic of the movie and the other is with its central point.
My first problem is the reasoning of the police and relatives that a man could rape a girl and then set out and find the two boys and hike back. There's absolutely no thought given to the fact that the protagonist is last seen marching off into the dark with a flashlight to find the two missing boys, Briony heads out in a different direction, stumbles upon what she thinks is a rape scene (with the protagonist walking away), and yet, somehow, the protagonist goes off to find the missing boys. The movie glosses right over this incongruity. Yet, I think in any court that was at all honest and mindful of the facts, a reconstruction of the time line would have called into question the protagonist's ability to have even been around to commit the crime he was accused of.
The biggest problem with the movie is that the title is unexpectedly ironic. There is very little atonement in the film. Sure, Briony becomes a nurse and tends to the wounded. But, the action she had to atone for didn't involve hospitals it involved stealing the chance of love away from her sister and she and her sister's mutual heart-throb. We, the audience, are supposed to just accept that by being a nurse and by writing a happy ending, Briony has made up for her sins. Maybe I am just too much of an old testament type, but she sent a man to jail and denied love between two people at a time - WWII - when there was little joy or hope to be had. Dunkirk was one of England's darkest hours. To atone for what she did, she need to make up for her specific misdeeds. If I mistakenly break my mother's favorite lamp, I buy her a new lamp and tell her I am sorry. I don't wait a decade and write an email admitting my sin then send it out on a listserv.
It was utterly unsatisfactory to have Briony say she gave them the happy ending in her novel that she denied them in life. She waited until she was on her deathbed to admit openly that she had erred. How incredibly cowardly; "Well, now that the truth cannot harm me, I will come forward." What balderdash. I love words. I am using them now, but I do not believe they can ever supplant our actions in their import.
Rarely has a movie ending filled me with such revulsion. How utterly remorseless of the filmmakers, to create a train crash and shine a light on it until the bitter end. What are we to learn from this? I certainly found nothing redeeming in Briony. She needed to go tell the authorities of her mistake, she needed to own up to what she did. Instead, we are supposed to accept that the few pages of fantasy in a book she wrote literally decades after the death of the affected parties is somehow a form of atonement. If it is, it is in gesture only. It is a one-calorie soda when you really need an energy drink.
I left depressed and unsatisfied. I could take no solace from the ending and it bothers me that this is so well liked. I appreciated the reviewer who said the power of the story is that it shows the power of words to hurt and their power to heal. But, while that sounds nice, that is not borne out. I would buy it if Briony had spoken truthfully to those in power. I would have even been okay if she fessed up and the authorities turned her away. But to do nothing is just contemptible. And, to me, her nursing of others almost smacks of conceit and condescension. It is a way for Briony to feel better about herself without ever having to do the really difficult part, which is to go to her parents and the police and admit her mistake.
The best things I learned from this movie were: 1) I am that most derided of film-goers, the one who always wants a happy ending, 2) never again let my wife pick the movie (at least without checking moviespoiler.com to see if I'll like it), and 3) I genuinely hate tragedies, which I have known since I read Macbeth in high school.