Weighty, ambitious and visually arresting, Atonement almost makes amends for its lack of dramatic weight

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 2007)

Atonement is a film exploring the consequences of love, and the guilt one carries when attempting to destroy it. Starting in the hot British summer 1935, we join a courtship between Robbie Turner and Cecilia Tallis, told through the eyes of Cecilia's 13-year-old sister Briony. Peeking from inside a house window she views her sister stripping off in front of Robbie and then plunging herself into the fountain in the garden of their country house. By the end of the day their lives will have changed forever, as the scheming imagination of Briony will have run its rage over the lives of the two lovers.
Cecilia (Keira Knightley) has travelled down from Cambridge; Robbie (James McAvoy), her university contemporary and son of her parents' housekeeper is dabbling with landscape gardening; and her brother Leon (Patrick Kennedy) is coming to dinner with a friend, the arrogant industrialist Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch). The performances are enjoyable and spot-on: Cecilia's brittle beauty; Robbie's educated but tempered confidence; the wily camaraderie between Leon and Marshall.
Cecilia clearly harbours an attraction to her university contemporary, but her inherent snobbishness towards his attachment to the more servile classes stilt her feelings somewhat. The class divide is tested even further, when her younger sibling Briony (a fantastic turn from Saoirse Ronan), who herself is dabbling in the arts of playwriting and novels, envelops her own imagination with a warped perception of their relationship. Robbie is branded a "sex maniac" and accused of raping Briony's friend and cousin Lola (Juno Temple). The accusations and stigma will haunt Briony, Cecilia and Robbie for the rest of their lives, the next chapter of which follows them through World War II. Briony, staring at her deathbed in the contemporary era, attempts to atone for her guilt by writing what she really saw, and what really happened during the summer of 1935.
Joe Wright, at the age of 35, clearly has a interesting future ahead of him There are times during Atonement when the style and flourish of the film's movement is elevated through its direction. He sees his films intricately and along with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey paints them vastly and beautifully. When he made Pride & Prejudice, the popular call was that he had made Jane Austen "muddy", despite the fact it was as pastorally arresting as any of Austen's novel's should be. Atonement is the same. It switches from the beauty of the Tallis country home to the grotty urbanism of wartime London with equal aplomb. He is clearly a director with an interesting style of film-making, but it is questionable whether he is utilises his gifts appropriately during the film. One sequence, a breathtaking long-take following Robbie's worn-out soldier walking along one of the French beaches, is both visually arresting and technically marvellous. But all it accumulates to is visual swaggery on Wright's part. What Atonement lacks in buckets is the kind of emotional attachment any loves story desperately relies. Wright attempting to make up for the general lack of involvement in these latter sequences resorts to showing off his technical hands, maybe hoping we haven't noticed how engaging the story is getting. It is a darn shame, far too much of one unfortunately, since the ambition and weight of Atonement make a movie you will want to love. Some people do, and it leads me to question my own interpretation of the film that they something out of it to treasure. But in my opinion there are far too many problems that match the movie's huge ambition. Keira Knightly, for all her hard work, doesn't possess the dramatic weight to make us feel for her character. Far too often is the pain lacking, when it is clear we are meant to be heartbroken at both her's and her lover's fate. I wanted to feel the sorrow of her character, and the closest you come to that is through the guilt and anguish displayed through Romola Garai's performance as the wartime Briony.
When the end reveals itself, it is genuinely moving, but a part of me felt as though the film had not earned the right to take me to that place. I still feel there is a great movie to be made on this subject, one that overcomes the literary trappings of the novel, and doesn't give distance to the audience through its more dramatic scenes. I still think people should see it, there is enough worth discussing and much to be admired. It is a beautiful, ambitious and weighty failure. One that will stay with you after you've seen it.