Cruel, touching and utterly brilliant

Rating: 9/10 (9 December 2007)

Teenage angst, war, love, regret, redemption and the power of words: all these themes are beautifully tied together in Atonement, which is quite simply one of the best literary adaptations of all time. It is so good, in fact, that I feel compelled to discourage viewers from reading the book before they see the movie, as Ian McEwan's striking, audacious prose is impossible to resist, but will also lessen the impact of the most shocking film epilogue I've seen this year.
Much more adult than director Joe Wright's previous pairing with Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice), Atonement is quite similar to Capote in its analysis of the writing process and the sacrifices the author has to make. The author in question is Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a 13-year old who is going to have her cousins perform a play she has written, the occasion being a dinner party at the family estate in the British countryside (the year is 1935). During the preparations, she notices the sexual tension between her older sister Cecilia (Knightley) and gardener Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) and misinterprets certain signals, leading to a pretty big lie that ruins the evening and destroys the young lovers' future.
The film then cuts to World War II, deftly moving from a Merchant-Ivory England to a ravaged France, where Robbie is stationed and forced to witness atrocities every day, his only consolation being the hope that he will meet Cecilia again some day. Back in London, instead, both of the Tallis sisters work as nurses, albeit completely isolated from one another, leaving Briony (Romola Garai) with plenty of time to think about her mistake and plan what to say, should all three ever happen to be in the same room one last time.
Although I said this is primarily a movie about writing, another key theme that never leaves the picture is a painful reflection on lost youth, evident in the casting choices: almost all the roles are played by twenty-somethings (the more adult parts, like Brenda Blethyn's cameo, are so brief they barely matter), and every single scene focuses on either Briony, Cecilia or Robbie, emphasizing how one little event altered three lives radically. Such attention to character requires good acting, and the performances are all equally superb: McAvoy, sad and angry, carries the film's second half with no fatigue at all, Knightley is dark, complex and very sensual in her first adult role, and the Ronan/Garai duo embody the young scribbler's ambition and ingenuousness with impressive sincerity.
Every bit as seductive are the visuals, further proof of the great eye Wright had displayed on Pride and Prejudice. None of the beautiful sequences, however, are there merely for their own sake, each and every one of them, even when evoking the director's previous work (the fog and rain look very familiar), having the purpose of setting a specific mood, a task in which they succeed at all times. One sequence in particular blends Wright's unique visual style with the impenetrable sadness he intends to convey: a five-minute tracking shot that follows Roobie's walk on a French beach amongst mutilations, deaths and overall suffering. Not since Scorsese followed Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco through the Copacabana's rear entrance has a long take stuck in my memory with the same intensity. Also notable is the movie's only sex scene which, no matter how tender, leaves an omen of tragedy in the air, making the tormented love story even more excruciating to watch.
And yet, for all the great thesping, editing and lensing, Atonement is, fundamentally, a story about the impact of the written word. The best writers are those who manage to trigger contrasting feelings in the reader, often simultaneously, which is why the bold, relentlessly cruel epilogue (featuring a priceless Vanessa Redgrave as the aged Briony) is so moving and infuriating in its controlled manipulation of what has just been seen. A masterpiece.