"I will return, to find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame."

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2018)

I was left with a bitter feeling at the end of this movie after hearing the elderly Briony Tallis (Vanessa Redgrave) explain to an interviewer how she manufactured the extended love story between her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and lover Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). Granted, and while putting things into perspective, young Briony (Saoirse Ronan) at the age of thirteen was not only mistaken in her accusation about Robbie, but was also in a bit of revenge mode after being rebuffed by him after the fountain 'drowning' incident. Her twenty first and final novel was meant to put to rest her conflicted heart over the matter of destroying two lives, but her means of 'atonement' at that point had no conciliatory effect on the way I felt about her character. Would that the relationship between Cecilia and Robbie have turned out the way it did following the war and it's aftermath, but it was all a fiction concocted by the troubled author. In a way, it's a story that never happened, at least as far as the latter half of the picture goes, so it left this viewer feeling as if he had been strung along. I don't think we had closure on chocolate heir Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Lola Quincey (Juno Temple) either, as their relationship further damned the future of Cecilia and Robbie as well. They could have come forward to contradict Briony's story when she was thirteen without jeopardizing their reputations, although to be fair, Lola was a kid at the time too and was certainly scared about what happened between her and Paul. So ultimately, all thoughts of a tragic love story between the principals was shattered by the end of the picture, leaving me with only a degree of measured contempt for the author who couldn't (or wouldn't) take responsibility when it mattered.