Several stories in one

Rating: 7/10 (5 September 2017)

"Atonement" is a movie evolving around a young girl who falsely accuses her sister's brother of rape and thus ruins and influences the life and relationship of both of them.
The production is of high value, delivers beautiful pictures and a very earnest and atmospheric set-up. Unfortunately, at times it is a bit hard to follow the story because at several points the flashbacks and time shifts include such great deals of time that the coherence is suffering. The ending, on the contrary, is pretty strong and achieves to weaken the negative impact of the questionable story-telling. I like how parts of the movie are proved wrong and how the audience is surprised by that. However, it would have been of benefit to tell one story consequently and not different stories of false accusations, war and love.
All in all it is a very well-produced and serious movie but in my eyes it is not superb. On the other hand I have to admit that I'm not a great fan of historical movies anyway, so I can guess that many people will like the film a lot better than I do and it is definitely worth a watch.