What a difference a day makes...

Rating: 7/10 (23 November 2008)

Not having read the source novel, I came to this much-praised adaptation with open eyes and ears and left at the end impressed by its undoubted polish and keen insight into the damaged psyches of its ill-served star-crossed lovers, played with credibility and engagement by young talents McAvoy and Knightley. For me, there were minor echoes of Joseph Losey's work of the 60's and 70's, borrowing a little of the multiple viewpoint technique of "Accident" and the retrospective narrative-framing style of "The Go-Between" (not to mention the latter's shared theme of the innocence of teenage children corrupted by a too-close proximity to the physical passions of their elders). Beautifully if a little showily shot and excellently played, the careful plotting is stylishly arranged for the viewer and to me only drags occasionally, with too-long scenes involving the hapless, exiled gone-for-a-soldier Robbie (McAvoy) winding up at the apparently shambolic Dunkirk beaches before "The Miracle" evacuation took place and "18 year-old Briony's" scene at the hospital with a dying French soldier. Well shot and acted as these scenes are, (the former, in particular, featuring a too-deliberately flashy "Tara"/"Gone With The Wind"-type 5-minute tracking shot passing through the Dunkirk site), for me pointed up a detrimental stylisation at play here and also slowed down the action too much especially as the final denouement is so effective in its ingenious invention and crisp depiction. Pre-War England is beautifully conveyed in its mansion-house glory, but beneath the veneer of manners and respectability seething passions drive the inhabitants, young and old, to extreme courses of action which change their lives forever. Although built around the strong performances of lovers McAvoy (natural and humane) and Knightley (ethereal and passionate), the remainder of the acting is also completely in simpatico, with the three actresses who depict the maturing touch-paper-lighting Briony, doing so to excellent effect. If in the end a touch too mannered and clever for its own good, this well-made film shows that even today imaginative period drama can entertain far better than any number of comic-book hero extravaganzas. Sadly ironic in a postscript that this was one of the final appearances by another purveyor of quality drama, the late Anthony Minghella, in a brief, almost unnoticed part as the elderly Briony's TV interviewer. One suspects he would very much have approved of director Wright and his team's work here.