Atonement

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Romance  |  War

Written by: Christopher Hampton

Directed by: Joe Wright

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 7, 2007
DVD: March 18, 2008

Running Time: 130 minutes, Color

Origin: UK / France

Language(s): English / French

Summary

RATING: R for disturbing war images, language and some sexuality

Starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, and Brenda Blethyn

Atonement spans several decades. In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion. On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Briony's vivid imagination. Robbie Turner, the educated son of the family's housekeeper, carries a torch for Briony's headstrong older sister, Cecilia. Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings; all it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust. When it does, Briony--who has a crush on Robbie--is compelled to interfere, going so far as to accuse Robbie of a crime he did not commit. Cecilia and Robbie declare their love for each other, but Robbie is arrested--and with Briony bearing false witness, the course of three lives is changed forever. Briony continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination, she finds the path to her uncertain atonement and to an understanding of the power of enduring love. (Focus Features)

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What The Critics Said

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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 256 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Morgan F. gave it a4:
This movie was so long and the plot was horribly thin. The acting was decent, but it hardly carried the film.

Chris G gave it a9:
Atonement is a beautiful wonderous original experience from begining to end. Knightly and McAvoy are quite good in their lead roles, but the films three great performances are all those of a single character, Brioni, at different stages in her life. The seamless way she's depicted in these three stages makes this a great film. The ending is surprising and very powerful. And the cinematography and score are nothing short of spectacular.

Meg R. gave it a0:
I am a big movie fan and love deep films. But this one not only made me fall asleep, but in the middle of the theater I cussed out the movie because it was so rediculously over rated. Knightly looks gaunt and ugly and it is rediculous in it's attempts to be edgy. A bad porn that is too gaudy.

Charles M. gave it a10:
First of all how can someone even review a movie without even seeing the whole movie. Now let me warn you, this movie is barely a romance. Its a look at the life of Biorny played by three different people (Saoirse Ronan,Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave whos acting is oscar worthy). Its a look on her life and how a lie she told ruined the life of her sister and her sister lover and how the guilt effects her whole life. The movie for me was wonderful paced, but as i see it wasnt for others. Do take time with the movie cause its truly worth it.

Jimmy S. gave it a9:
Redemption song “Atonement.” by Jimmy So No symphonic unfolding for “Atonement,” but a sweeping romance epic it nevertheless is, albeit a new breed. Few films of this genre begin with as fast a lick, with a gush of crystalline storytelling of a day at a country estate during pre-war Britain. You get the straight story with the no-nonsense wordsmith Ian McEwan (from whose novel the film is based on) and his pace is a sure swagger. One thing you can’t accuse his characters of being is wishy-washy, and just as McEwan is sure of who it is that he populates in his book, the director Joe Wright is confident of his color vocabulary and staccato editing. From the noggins of these two spring their protégé, a quick-stride of a teenage nobility in white dress, one Briony Tallis (played in the first act of the movie by Saoirse Ronan). They are in sync: author, director and character, presenting a united front comprising lightness, grace and proportion; Pauline Kael famously listed these as the first three basics to the form, for good reason, for they do make a picture. The first act takes place in 1935 on one of those hot summer days that I dream of having—“in the years to come I would often think back to this time”—if not for the terrible crime and mistake that would occur at the remains of the day. Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel and the 1993 Merchant Ivory film have little in common with “Atonement” except for the period and setting. The autumnal “The Remains of the Day” is a subdued affair while our film is sweeping and passionate. The butler Stevens is emotionally and sexually repressed until, we assume, the end of his days. The sexual repression in “Atonement” happens early in the lives of our characters, and is blown wide open early on. Briony displays a literary ambition that has her whipping out a first play called “The Trials of Arabella,” a title that smells of overcompensation for sexual. Her fascination with the housekeeper’s handsome son, Robbie Turner (played by James McAvoy), some ten years her elder, and what Robbie and her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) know about rounding the bases that she doesn’t know with confidence yet, is the driving force for what happens in much of the movie. Everyone at some point except Helmut Newton thinks sex is bad somehow, but McEwan takes the condition to its logical conclusion. When Briony misinterprets an act of sexual tension between Robbie and Cecilia, it signals the start of a sequence of events that becomes material for her to weave into a real-life paranoia plot—funny if it wasn’t tragic that personalities like Bill O’Reilly also love fodder of this type. All great romance pictures, especially the tragic ones (and they’re the best ones), juxtapose unbridled, just-go-for-it passion against repressed, responsible—or worst of all—boring love. “Atonement” does the same and keeps the tradition alive, in line with “Brokeback Mountain,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Before Sunset” and “The English Patient.” That last film is the closest predecessor to “Atonement” and came eleven years ago; sweeping tragic romances suffer in this cynical and quirky Internet age, but the tough ones blossom. Nowadays, it is hard to make love on screen without some breakthroughs, innovations or flashy tricks. Wright’s treatment is as traditional as “The English Patient.” Cecilia and Robbie are destined lovers, but the moment you realize this does not come in a scene where the two of them are together. Instead, they get ready for the night’s dinner party in their own rooms, one in the mansion and one in the servant’s cottage. They are separated, but the two are moving to the same beautiful score of “La Boheme.” It could be a perfect scene if it didn’t look like a Chanel perfume ad, but never mind that. When was the last time a movie made you realize the world needs more Puccini? Wright and Minghella know lyrical beauty is all you need. The talk has been about the dress (shiny green) and the long track shot (long). The said dress, worn by Cecilia for the dinner party, is paradise. But soon paradise is lost, Briony makes a terrible mistake and her innocence is shattered. Then, that war thing starts and the simple convenience of the British aristocracy is also smashed to pieces. Briony is on a redemption train trying to play catch-up to the greatest generation, the people who will forever get the first sympathetic mention in World War II history books. Robbie is a member of the greatest generation—but, even better, he would have been a dreamy Clarissa-loving physician—too good for this world and too perfect to ever work out. Robbie, imputed and discarded by the society that promised his dreams, finds himself in the nightmare of war in the second act. To McEwan, the British working class was sacrificed one last time to stall the irrevocable destruction of the nobility, and the snap shot taken of this endeavor is the Dunkirk evacuation, where 330,000 British and French soldiers waited for Godot. This is when the said track shot is used, and critics have been letting Wright have it, calling him an extravagant technocrat. I don’t see what’s wrong with showing off if the resulting effort makes the weakest part of McEwan’s novel like ballet on screen. All Wright had to do was use a small portion of his track shot to do what two hours of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” should have done if it promised what it advertised. I was sold. Vanessa Redgrave plays the old, vascular dementia-stricken and dying Briony as she is being interviewed on a television show. She appears for only several minutes and is in what seems to be a different movie—certainly no longer the period epic we were watching earlier. Readers familiar with the novel know what scene this is, but they will be alarmed at how clinical the book’s majestic epilogue has become in the hands of Wright. Yet it only looks minimal—there is nothing small or clean about Briony’s final atonement, which appears in the novel as the following: “I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end.” In the novel, those words were a little trite. In the movie, treated by such a master as Redgrave, Briony’s atonement becomes downright chilling. Looking at Redgrave’s gently yet frighteningly demented face uttering those words incites instant responses—How can anyone believe in such a crock of bull? Does she really think that writers can play God, or is that her dementia talking? The book never seemed ambivalent—the answer is implied to be “yes”—but the film is about the very idea that ambivalence—the viewers’ confusion toward what they just saw—is better than delusional thinking. Atonement might be a theological term, but break the word apart and it almost has a mundane quality: at-one-ment. Briony arrives at at-one-ment through confabulation. The novel, stripped to its core, might say something like this: “Hey, take it easy, make stuff up, have a good time!” The film, in the end, dunks you into a tank of water, life flashing before your eyes, then yanks you back into existence, gasping and palpitating and not knowing whether to be thrilled or start crying. “Atonement” will not bring you at-one with anything, but it is a powerfully unsettling experience, and every bit as good as the masterpiece novel. ♦

Ruby Ruby gave it a10:
It's like the perfect movie.

Rogorn M. gave it a9:
Cleverly structured (both in book and film), the sequence of revelations makes up for a few bits in which the story, wanting to pause for gorgeous and moody photography, plods a little. Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are superb, and Vanessa Redgrave's scenes to close the film are the definitive clincher. Tremendous adaptation.

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