Some highs, many lows.

Rating: 4/10 (7 October 2019)

I was very interested in watching this movie, I like the cast, and I had previously enjoyed the director's take on Pride and Prejudice.
Sadly this is one beautifully shot disappointment.
From the start, the conceits that make the events unfold seemed fancyful and contrived.
The "wrong letter" being sent, and then being surprisingly available as evidence, the perfunctory and almost non-existent character interactions, it all feels detached, ficticious and staged.
Adding to that, the poetic, dreamlike camerawork, furthers this disconnection, who are these characters? We never know their real conflicts or motivations, we just see events. So as viewers, we are forced to ponder but expected to empathize with almost no reason to.
Even the main titular romance that we are supposed to care about is underdeveloped (if it is developed at all), was it the class struggle? Why had they grown seemingly cold to each other? Were they just lustful or actually in love?
We are never told.
Maybe this is intentional, as by the end we learn all the narrative is possibly just Briony's version of the events, and she is an unreliable narrator that doesn't want to adorn the narrative with fancyful embellishments. But this fails in two levels: firstly, as a novel and as a movie, theres a cold shallowness to it, It would be a very bland novel. And secondly it feels disingenuous because the movie is FILLED with flights of fancy and embellishments.
So we move down a list of very unsubtle scenes that barely functionally connect the narrative threads without really ever saying anything purposeful (the scene where the rapist marries his victim and Briony refuses to speak up comes across as a blunt and nearly ridiculous allegory for the movie itself).
Some moments however did connect with me. Scenes such as the french soldier dying, or even when briony slips away in the middle of the night to write, paint a little more characterization and actual textures to this world and characters. But these are few and far between.
And finally there is the epilogue, or the twist.
In some ways this is a clever turn that makes a lot of the movie's more poetic aspirations more significant. If this really is Briony's perspective, it makes sense that shes focused on specific moments that are meaningful to her even if they dont give the audience the answers.
However it also is a slap in the face, as it basically is a twist on the old cliche of "it was all a dream".
Moreover it is hard to swallow that she fails to include any significant moments of conflict or characterization, which would most likely be pivotal and crucial if she was to tell the story earnestly.
It comes as a weak, arrogant excuse to call it attonement, and to justify her silence as saying honesty would have helped no one. Because then why does she feel the need to be honest now?
And lets not forget, she's even lying in her absolution, to give them the life they should have had? Who? They died for her actions and she still shys away of accepting the full responsibility.
Even more offensively to me, the movie presents her as some sort of tragic figure, trying to do something nice for the people she hurt now that she's dying. But it all rings fake, egotistical and hollow.
Attonement there is none.