Movie captures spirit of McEwan's Great Novel

Rating: 9/10 (17 February 2008)

POSSIBLE SPOILERS Ian McEwan's "Atonement" blew me out of the water when I read it shortly after publication. It was better than any other novel I've read in the past 25 years. Although it changes certain details, the movie captures the essence of the novel: the tragedy caused by a 13-year-old girl with a vivid imagination, wrecking the lives of her older sister and her young lover. With Saoirse Ronan as Brioni, the 13 year old, Keira Knightley as Cecilia, the older sister, and James MacAvoy as Robby, the young man sent to prison as a result of Brioni's misidentification of him as a rapist, the movie gets off to a swift start and hurls along with the outbreak of World War II, the British retreat at Dunkirk and the bombing of London where both Cecilia and Brioni (now played at 18 by Ramola Garai) are both working as nurses. The shock at the end of the novel is also delivered by the film. Keira Knightley, James MacAvoy and Saoirse Ronan capture their characters perfectly in the early part of the movie when the beginning of the tragedy unfolds. The second part of the film is a bit less satisfactory, partly because McEwan's description of the retreat to Dunkirk was considerably more vivid than what the film is able to show -- possibly because it would have taken greater resources to capture the sweep of McEwan's narrative. The London scenes also suffer because the novel concentrated on the Cecilia-Robby story line whereas the film focuses to a greater extent on the older Brioni (and Garai is a much less compelling actress than Ronan). Still, considering the eventual outcome, the choices made by Joe Wright, the director, and by the screen writer are defensible. The story, after all, is Brioni's in the end. However, whereas "Atonement" was a great novel, in my opinion the film version -- despite superior cinematography and excellent acting --is merely very good.