Well-Crafted; Overwrought; More of a Puzzle than a Love Story

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2008)

"Atonement" is an intelligent, scrupulously crafted film boasting lovely images and high production values. It is also cold, antiseptic, and artificial.
"Atonement"'s best feature is the chemistry between the aristocratic Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and her family's servant, Robbie (James McAvoy). McAvoy, especially, is a revelation. One hopes that he will be handed many more roles, and soon, in which he can do what he did here: play a dreamy-eyed, innocent and young, slave to passion.
WARNING: THIS REVIEW WILL REVEAL THE "SURPRISE" ENDING OF "ATONEMENT." If you don't want to know how the movie ends, don't read this review.
"Atonement"'s opening scenes telegraph that its major focus is not love or even human beings; rather, "Atonement"'s focus is the problems facing writers. "Atonement" is an intellectual exercise, an essay on the writer's life, and the role of fiction.
"Atonement" opens with a shot of an English manor house. But, wait  it's not a manor house at all, but a doll house replica, in the bedroom of Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a 13-year-old upper class English girl and playwright. And, so, the frame, the point of view, and the theme of the movie is set. This won't be a story about its ostensible main characters  the lovers Cecilia and Robbie, at all  rather it is a story focused on Briony telling a story that suits her needs and desires.
Symbolism is portentous and beats the viewer on the head  almost literally. Since the movie is all about the job of the fiction writer, the sound of typewriter keys striking paper, a ball striking a wall, heels clicking down a hallway, all segue into the soundtrack's savage drumbeat percussion. There is plenty of water symbolism, including Briony  pronounced "briney"'s  name. Also much is made of light. The opening daytime scenes, at the English manor house, are overexposed. Briony is lead to a fateful encounter thanks to a shiny pin. A desk lamp blinds her and distorts what she sees. With all this light and water, you may want to bring your sunscreen.
Briony is that most clichéd of characters  a straight-laced English female who superficially recoils from sex but secretly burns with passion and jealousy. Her self-control is stereotypically destructive. Briony's bedroom walls are covered with wallpaper depicting pullulating foliage. A bee, symbol of something sweet  honey  dangerous, and female  beats, loudly, percussively, against Briony's bedroom window. One thinks of "High Wind to Jamaica" and other English works in which a cosseted English girl wreaks havoc once her inner savage is let out.
Briony believes that Robbie is guilty of assaulting a child, Lola. Lola was assaulted, but she and Briony accuse the wrong man. In short, females are guilty when men violate them. On Briony's word alone, Robbie is parted from his love, Cecilia, and sent to prison. This is not presented convincingly. Robbie had an alibi  he had been rescuing two lost boys, as the boys can attest. Too, he is his master's prize; though the son of a scullery maid, his master is sending him to medical school. And, Cecilia loves him. Why the courts would take the word of a 13-year-old known fabulist against that of her better educated and older sister is never made clear.
A good movie could have explored how the courts were weighted against a working class man accused of assault, and on Cecilia's sticking by her working class lover in spite of everything, but "Atonement" simply cheats; it skips the work of its own plot, and jumps to the 1940 English retreat from the Nazis at Dunkirk. Exposition informs us that Robbie had gotten out of prison by joining the army. Film fans have made much of the five-and-a-half minute long, single-take tracking shot of the chaotic scene on the beach, with English forces shooting their horses and destroying equipment in order that they might not fall into Nazi hands.
While watching this scene, I thought to myself, "Well, we've just left the movie." Nothing in this Dunkirk tracking shot does anything to advance previous narrative or themes. It's as if the author ran out of ideas and said, "Hey, wasn't there a very cinematic war going on nearby at this very time? Let's nip over to France for a while and exploit the wartime scenery." Robbie dies of war wounds while waiting to be evacuated from Dunkirk. Cecilia dies when a tube station is flooded (more water symbolism).
Years later, Briony, now Vanessa Redgrave (would that we all morphed into Vanessa Redgrave as we aged) is a famous novelist and is telling the story on a TV talk show. With one change  in her fictionalized memoir of the events, Briony has provided a happy ending. She allows her characters, Robbie and Cecilia, to survive the war, and to retire to a lovely, sunny beach house (more light and water) where they spend their days gazing into each other's eyes and smooching. Briony, you see, has been eaten up with guilt for having accused Robbie of a crime he did not commit. To make up for that, to "atone" for ruining her sister and her sister's lover's lives, Briony writes a happy novel based on their experiences.
Which is all very clever. And, as evidenced by reviews here, for many viewers, it's very moving. I felt this movie's intellectual, manipulative hand against my chest  in the heavy handed symbolism, in the clichéd plot devices, and in the underdeveloped characters. The viewer learns nothing about Cecilia or Robbie, except that they are both young and good looking and hot for each other, and that they speak with those posh British accents we've come to associate with quality entertainment.
But his must be said again  James McAvoy is brilliant, and should be working, right now, on more and better films.