Types, Typed Images

Rating: Null/10 (5 January 2008)

I knew from the first few moments of "Pride and Prejudice" that we were in the hands of someone who understood literature cinematically. Austen is virtually impossible to film because typical of many books, it requires some ambiguity about internal ruminations and the observed events. He mapped this into shifting layers and inside-outside in the very first scene. I moved forward in my seat.
Here he is much, much better because he is filming a book written with cinematic values. I cannot say if it is a well-written book. The basic story itself is ordinary, sort of a reverse Lolita with the young girl as the writer and untrusted narrator. (There is one key shot. Everything else up until the "visit" is witnessed by others except the corpses of schoolgirls. This is the only scene that is staged in a stylistically unrealistic way, and it should be a tipoff that Briony's story is folded into the outer wrapper as well as the events we see.)
The most notable trick he does is use the typewriter in a pervasive way, in the story, in the writing of the story, in the score and even in the eye toward the end.
He uses camera movement in wonderful ways. For instance, he has Briony move on the upper corridor and stairs of her home in precisely the same movement the older Brony does through the hospital beds, except this time we know it is her eye we are using and her memory we are plumbing. There's the amazing one-take sequence at Dunkirk. Its not like the P T Anderson ripoff of Urusevsky where he just touches characters; instead it is derived from "Soy Cuba" and "Touch of Evil" in the sense that both deep and contextual narrative is conveyed. Again, we learn that this is coherently constructed by the writer and not witnessed.
The business of our hero being folded into "Port of Shadows," (about a deserter  we never learn why Robbie was separated from his company) isn't unique, but its apt and deep. Movies, books, pictures, stories about stories about lies.
I don't know Juno Temple from elsewhere  though I know she was in "Notes on a Scandal" which I saw, but she is the real villain here and she pulls it off well, as does her counterpart the young Briony.
In preparation for this, I saw "Soy Cuba" because I knew this would have the Soviet eye, and the 75 "Great Gatsby," with which this shares quite a few values, including some of the story. I'm glad I did.
It works. Its intelligent. Its cinematic and literary. Keira is tolerable. There's a great speech about letting the Germans have France. You should see it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.