Great Movie... with a few problems

Rating: 8/10 (31 January 2008)

The first 45-50 minutes of this film were absolutely beautiful. Had the film just been released as that I would have perhaps loved it more. The director Wright is certainly coming into his own and I am anticipating all of his upcoming films. Saoirse Ronan was wonderful as the young Briony, her performance really impressed me, especially considering she is so young, her academy award nomination was very much deserved and not at all one of those nominations that is just tagged onto an epic film to make it look better. I think I can almost even say that once her part in the film is over nothing quite holds up as well.
I guess this is mainly why I feel the film is disjointed, we spend the first 45 minutes of the movie exploring ONE single day, then we breeze through the final hour or so of the film and cover a span of several decades. So we go from the minute exploration of the details of a day to the cliffs notes of the rest of everyone else's life.
This film was around 2 hours and really should have been right at 3 hours, I felt so much was left unsaid and unexplored, the pace for the first hour indicated that you were in for an English Patient type of film and yet at some point the filmmakers decided not to be so bold with this project.
Speaking of the English Patient, I am a film scholar and the director of the English Patient shows up near the end of this film in a small role and that completely took me out of this film. All I could think of was why did they put Anthony Minghella in this film? I mean I know I shouldn't have been so distracted but I was.
This films marketing came in completely wrong, it seemed arrogant, all of the magazine interviews only focused on how it was believed that this film would rack up 14 Oscar nominations.
But all said and done I still believe this film is worthy of its Best Picture Nomination, and of the nominees I might almost consider it the best, although There Will Be Blood was quite interesting.
Bottom Line: See it.