Atonement Movie Review
James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai; Directed by Joe Wright
Things are dull at the Tallis household. The lazy summer ambles idly by, leaving it up to the inhabitants of the estate to find their own amusements. Young Briony has spent much of the time at her typewriter, fiercely drawing up the workings of a masterful play, which she intends to volunteer her cousins into performing once finished. Her older sister, Cecilia, has found diversion in a blooming flirtation with the handsome young gardener, Robbie. When Briony happens upon what appears to be an improper scene of suggestive desire between the two of them, her keen mind and quick imagination go to work at once, forming conclusions and judgments almost immediately. Things begin to liven up considerably more when the eldest brother of the Tallis family brings a friend home for the holidays, and a small dinner party is planned for the evening. In the span of a few very short hours, Briony's innocence is shattered so brutally that the actions she will take in response to an unspeakably atrocious crime will have everlasting repercussions of the very worst kind.
This film was based on author Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel, and proves to be a project that adapted terrifically well to the screen. It is a story that manages to shed the light of truth into dark corners, only then to have us recoil back into the darkness upon having seen what lay there. The beautiful landscape and atmosphere of the Tallis estate seduces us into an almost dream-like state. We follow the characters around as they frolic through fields of tall grasses and flowers. Fountains of clear, cool water sparkle and dazzle us. The house itself is at once a dark and mysterious labyrinth, and a bright, almost Roman-esque palace of marble and stone pillars.
But things get quickly thrown into a nightmarish state. Suddenly we find ourselves on the bloody banks of France in the middle of the Second World War. The dreamy summer sky has turned gray and steely. The perfumed air is now rank with smoke, decay, and disease. It is quite a journey. Like a swan dive off of a cliff into beautiful crystal waters that turn out to be shark infested. The film is, in the grandest and briefest words I can think of, an absolute technical masterpiece. Joe Wright's loving direction proves to audiences again that the miraculous wonders he worked with the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice was no fluke of talent or ability. Without question, he stands to be one of the best and brightest directors working in the cinematic world today. Cinematography also wins out here, featuring a now famous five-minute sequence of continuous camera movement down a war ravaged coast full of the sights that make men go mad. Dario Marianelli's captivating and harrowing score deserves praise as well, if nothing but for the absolute genius and brilliance of having the rhythmic beats of strings and percussion coincide with that of the ominous sounds of Briony’s typewriter. It was an amazingly bone-chilling scheme that affected the nerves and heart rate far better than any Hitchcockian strain.
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