Fails to completely engage

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2008)

When thirteen-year old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) stumbles upon her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) being embraced by the housekeeper's son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) in the library of their country estate, it sets off a chain of events that alters the lives of every member of the family for years to come. Set in the English countryside in 1935 and based on the novel by Ian McEwen, Atonement is a tale of jealousy, betrayal, and the consequences of a lie. An epic of the doomed romantic genre, the film works hard to impress and has a few inspired moments but ultimately fails to completely engage. While it touches on class distinctions, it does not explore them in any depth and, though Cecilia seems somewhat more liberated than the rest of the stuffy clan, most characters are wooden and never come fully alive.
Briony, in an Oscar nominated performance by Ronan, is a talented writer who writes her own stories and plays, and has a crush on Robbie. She even jumps into a pool of water to test whether or not he will rescue her but the incident only creates resentment that boils beneath the surface. Her discovery of an obscene letter written to Cecilia by Robbie intended as a letter of apology frightens and confuses the young girl, though the letter allows Cecilia to realize for the first time that she is in love with Robbie. Awaiting the opportunity to present one of her plays at a family gathering that includes new arrivals brother Leon (Patrick Kennedy) and his friend Paul (Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy heir of a chocolatier, she sees her sister and Robbie embracing. Letting her fears run rampant, she accuses Robbie of assaulting her young cousin Lola (Juno Temple) and the repercussions of her lie are immediate and far reaching.
On the flimsy and uncorroborated testimony of a thirteen-year old girl, Robbie is sent to prison and the two lovers separated at their most vulnerable time. Neither Briony nor Lola nor the real perpetrator ever makes a move to correct the injustice and neither seems to feel much remorse. Eventually Robbie is allowed to join the British Army as a World War II private while Cecilia becomes a nurse in the war effort. Before his unit deploys, the two lovers meet in London to rekindle their short-lived affair and she tells him that she left her family in disgust and tells him that she will always love him.
What was fully involving in the first half hour becomes a chore in the middle however, as the film loses its momentum and the promise of its exciting beginning becomes a lost opportunity. As Robbie waits at Dunkirk for a ship to bring him home, Briony, now a young adult, becomes a nurse caring for soldiers wounded in the war, hoping in some small way to atone for the havoc caused by her lie. Many years later, as a successful novelist, she uses the power of fiction to try and make amends but her guilt is not convincing and there is ultimately little catharsis either for herself or the audience.