Great novel -- lackluster film

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2007)

I saw this movie about 24 hours after I finished reading the novel. To paraphrase someone else's metaphor, to compare the novel to this movie is like comparing a swiss army knife to a spork. The parts are all there, but somehow it never comes together. Much of the enjoyment derived from Ian McEwan's novel comes from his masterful and poetic use of the English language. Though his words are used in the movie dialog, the internal musings are absent. For instance, the scene in which Harriet Walters is shown languishing in her bedroom with a sleeping mask covering her eyes seems out of place unless you know that in the novel Mrs. Tallis suffers greatly from migraine. So much so in fact that she has ceded the running of the household to Cecilia. A third of the novel is devoted to Robbie's war experience and the retreat of troops to Dunkirk. It was hard to read because of the horrors depicted. The movie unfortunately reduces the utter senseless stupidity and violence of war to a series of expensive tracking shots. As for the cast, I think they were fine. James McAvoy and Keira Knightly fit their roles, but the movie never explains things that would have put their love story in believable context. The love story seems bizarre unless you understand that these two characters had been close childhood friends. They both attended Cambridge -- paid by her father and while there, grew apart. He graduated with distinction, she barely passed. Now that they've graduated, her father has agreed to pay for his medical studies. Mrs. Tallis does not share her husband's sentiments. She doesn't think it is a good idea, remarking prophetically,"Nothing good will come of it." Cecilia seems to share her mother's beliefs because she snubbed him socially while they were at university together. It's a shame really because all the elements are there; it's just they sort of hang.