Patchy and probably underdeveloped

Rating: 6/10 (11 October 2007)

I went to see this film last night. I had high expectations because it has received an extremely high vote average on the IMDb. Coupled to that I have read a couple of Ian McEwan novels, The Cement Garden, and The Comfort of Strangers. Both novels are exquisite, and McEwan is a total master of fiction. The Comfort of Strangers was a bruising read and The Cement Garden was incredibly trenchant and reminded me of my own upbringing.
So I had some doubts about whether his intensity could be brought to screen (although the film of Cement Garden is rather good). I did actually groan when I saw in the first credits that the film was a Working Title production, because although I know they have a good reputation, generally speaking I hate their stuff. Far too glossy and bland.
The first shot was very promising, a dolls house trompe a l'oeil and exquisitely arranged toys. The Camera pans from the house to the troupe of toy soldiers and plastic bestiary, which taper towards a desk where we see the precocious stripling Briony typing out the last words of her first play. The uncanny organisation of the toys is a powerful indication of the girl's state of mind: both fanciful and controlling. A coup de maitre worthy of McEwan. Then there is a soundtrack where the main instrument is a typewriter. A very bold strategem indeed as in my opinion cinema needs to distance itself from literature, but entirely successful.
From there the level of directorial virtuosity declines rather rapidly, we see that a vat of money is used to substitute for creativity, and the audience is meant to be wowed by painstaking and yet quite beside-the-point recreations of scenes from the war. We've had all this with Gangs of New York, Saving Private Ryan, and other tepid 'masterpieces' ad infinitum.
Having said that there is actually a continuous shot of Dunkirk in this film which lasts five minutes that I know will have even the most cynical of film watchers drooling. It is as a character says like a scene from the Bible, I have seen a similar looking Breughel print.
However the film is meant to be a love story, and by God, it does not convince me as one. The love between Cecilia and Robbie is not properly established, and most of the other characters are cardboard cut-outs. I felt the film could have been a lot longer to enable some character development. The only fully fledged character is Briony. How I long for the days of Billy Wilder who established the journalistic character of Chuck Tatum in Ace in the Hole simply by having him strike a match on a typewriter in a very practised manner.
Some of the scenes in France during the fighting I am sure would work better in the novel, in the film they are really a bit devoid of context. Finally the end of the film is a conceit that really failed to impress me, and I won't give it away but the atonement strikes me as very hollow.
I think this movie tries very hard to be an epic after the fashion of The English Patient, unfortunately it becomes rather tired and generic. Having said that the source material is of such a quality and the amount of money spent seemingly so vast that the film is very enjoyable. But nowhere near a masterpiece.