half the time great drama of a crisis in ego, and the other half...

Rating: 7/10 (24 December 2007)

Atonement is being acclaimed now as one of the best films of the year, a surefire contender for the best picture prize at the Oscars (at least, apparently, as a "proper" film as opposed to the crime classic No Country for Old Men). It's not hard to understand it, for a good lot of the running time; Joe Wright, the director, has taken what is an apparently beautiful book (unread by me) and transformed it into the stuff of true existential crises. It's about a young girl, Briony, who witnesses what she thought she saw as a crime. This might seem unclear at first, but it isn't, it's a clear move on the part of immediate revenge for a tryst she witnessed between her sister and a worker (Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy). He's sent to prison, then to war, where unforeseen circumstances may change everyone's lives.
Doesn't sound like a bad premise, with a good dosage of romance in the mix. And for the first half hour, forty minutes it IS great film-making of a tense nature, focusing on the young girl who just wants to be the center of attention with her first play and is cut-off by family and other matters that flock away. All of this is filmed by Wright, and acted by the case, quite absorbingly, and by the end you really care what will happen to poor Robbie... But then the story takes a turn that only slightly recovers in the last ten or so minutes. Suddenly the point of view changes- which, I suppose, is also true to the book, albeit from what I've heard lopping off some bits and pieces that would have made it a longer but richer film- to Robbie fighting in the war, though not exactly 'fighting'. He walks around a lot, comes across a beach-front of soldiers (in a startling 5 minute long take no less, indulgent but effective), and yet this coupled later with the emergence of the Briony as a nurse doesn't really click for me.
Yes, it should be compelling cinema to see Robbie suffering along with all the other British in the midst of the early, rough days of WW2, but what Wright shows us isn't much more compelling (or, for that matter, as well done) as any given number of war pictures of the period done in the present; even a harsh hospital scene with wounded only works so much until it's overkill. When the point of view changes it suffers, and when it finally returns to Brialy it takes some time to get adjusted back in it all (not helped by a nearly too restrained performance by Romola Garai, particularly in dramatic scenes where, whether or not they actually happened, should be believable). I may be in the minority here from the masses who are praising Atonement to the sky, but only when Vanessa Redgrave appears does the film finally offer a satisfying catharsis.
It's a sad thing too, because when Atonement is at its best it's what many dramas, particularly those of this kind of period setting, seem to lack in dealing the old love-and-war story. This time real danger, caused by complete human error in youth and judgment, is in the mix, and it provides a level of interest in what will happen to the characters. That Knightly and McAvoy work so well speaks to the director's gifts. I just wished that Wright either made the film longer to make it even more of an epic feat, or knew how to deal with the change in perspective of narrative for a FILM, as opposed to in a novel.