Fails to tell a compelling story

Rating: 3/10 (17 December 2007)

Atonement fails to deliver a compelling story. It is plodding, lacks direction, and when it gathers momentum and manages to build tension, it fritters it away. The style gets in the way of storytelling. There's no real antagonist, and it's not even a romance. The romantic link between the Robbie & Cecilia is tenuous, and their supposed attachment and subsequent angst feels, since it's left to the imagination, contrived.
It drags at the outset, but eventually the characters become interesting and the relationships between them show promise, though it's still unclear what the movie is about. The film's jumping around in time and re-playing of a scene from a second perspective largely feels like an imposition of style at the expense of story. Despite this, through the first act of the movie, there was enough potential that I still thought it might deliver a compelling drama.
After the first big turning point, all the characters save the main three disappear. Cecilia is essentially abandoned as well, as her experiences in the intervening four years are barely given lip service. Robbie's story hints that he suffered in prison but we are never sure why, since all we get is the last few days of his attempt to return home. Why do they want each other so badly? How much have they been in touch? Why is Robbie in such a hurry, and what happens if he is late? We are not told. Instead, we are treated to an interminable montage on the beach at Dunkirque, pointlessly piling on the ambiance just in time for that storyline to end.
When the film finally rejoins the protagonist, Briany, it is the most potentially poignant part of the film. She has abandoned her personal ambitions and immersed herself in a life of service to try to atone for her lie and the damage it caused. At least this is interesting, since she is the least sympathetic of the three and even though we want her to earn redemption, she only makes it part way. But even this feels belabored and without direction: she is remorseful and feels she can't ever suffer enough to atone, yet there is no further interplay of the characters or deepening of their conflict. The final chance for this is squandered when the three characters finally come together near the end, and instead the story abruptly jumps 65 years into the future and the movie ends.
This movie fails to convey what the characters lost as a result of Briany's betrayal, never gives us enough to understand how their three lives were ruined, and hints at but never develops the potential for conflict between the three and tension surrounding Briany's possible redemption. Of the three, only Briany's suffering is really captured. I wanted to like it, but ultimately it fails to tell the story in a compelling way, and so it fails as a film.