It lets on being something that it is not

Rating: 3/10 (11 June 2012)

This movie was an odd experience. It is obviously a very expensive production, with thousands of extras, and for example Dunkirk being acted out in front of our eyes! And the same with the scenes from the London hospital and the air raid shelter in the London Underground: the costumes, settings, props, and everything are perfect. As a period piece this movie is excellent, and you can really learn something from it!
Another thing I liked a lot, was that the French were really speaking French (and not English, which is so common in war movies - even the Germans usually speak English...). This added to the feeling of reality. There is also some wonderful music in the movie, that gets your pulses going.
BUT... the problem is that the story in itself does not come up to the expectations you get from all the above. One believes that one is watching a movie that shall turn out to be GREAT... but that does never happen. And as one gets to expect so much, the disappointment is bigger. The story is after all the most important thing in a movie - it cannot live only on perfect settings.
At the same time, the subject matter is not THAT uninteresting. It made me remember when I was about the same age, and something similar happened to two girls I knew. They both had an infatuation for a riding master, and in a diary they wrote down their sexual fantasies about him. This diary was found by the mother of one of the girls, who phoned the police. The girls were so embarrassed about the sexual fantasies, that they rather let on that it had all happened in reality. The poor riding master went through Hell for several months, before he was acquitted - and he could not work at the riding school anymore, because some parents were still thinking "no smoke without fire". So - I found Brianna's actions psychologically correct.
I think that the plot in "Atonement" might have been "enough", if it had been done in another way. Something is lacking, but I cannot really put my finger on what it is.
But for one thing, it was very confusing that the scenes did not come in chronological order. There were too many flashbacks, and sometimes one got to see the same scene twice at various stages in the movie, but from different people's perspectives. Also, in the beginning of the movie I had difficulties keeping two - or even three - of the younger men apart, because the actors were too alike. That is very confusing indeed. And then in the end, the plot became even more confusing, when it turned out that some of the events had not happened at all, but were taken out of a novel about the whole thing... (???)