Atonement Review

Another day, another literary adaptation. This time it's Joe Wright, late of new Pride and Prejudice fame, taking on Ian McEwan's Atonement. This I have not read, but I will soon, and I hear it's a good book.

Wright's film does it's best to remind us that there are things movies can do that books cannot: It takes the click-clacks of young writer Briony Tallis's typewriter and weaves them into a frenetic, pulsating score. It follows the wrongly convicted soldier James McAvoy around devastated WWII Dunkirk, France, in an impressively expansive and detailed setpiece that is almost a world in and of itself. Shots are framed with dynamic panache and symmetry. It's a beautiful film.

And a powerful story- Briony's (Saiorse Ronan) lie concerning McAvoy, the lover of her older sister (Keira Knightley), is built up to with patience and tense scenes of misinterpretation and dread (the trailer makes it seems as if it takes two minutes. Just saying). The fallout of the lie, name McAvoy's imprisonment and choice to enlist rather than serve his term, and Knightley's estrangement from her younger sister and family, get skipped over for the drama to play out in letters to and from the three concerned, as an aging Briony (played by Romola Garai, and eventually Vanessa Redgrave) searches for the titular atonement for her misdeed.

It's a story that beyond the central incident, could have played out in a predictable, melodramatic way, that would have made left novel and film moving enough, but ultimately forgettable. But there's a turn that is unexpected, and takes the story to a new place, that asks questions about the nature of writing, and the fulfillment of the audience it's intended for, as well as the writer. Redgrave shows up briefly to pose these questions, as a much older Briony Tallis, and does a grand job as ever.

It's impossible to talk more about why I like the ending scenes without giving too much away, but I couldn't recommend Atonement any higher, and I'm more than excited to read the novel that inspired it.

When to See It: ASAP

Leftover Thoughts:

• Knightley and McAvoy do fine jobs indeed, but I can't really see the dual Golden Globes nominations. Maybe it's because their roles are straightforward ones of heartbreak, relatively speaking.
• Redgrave, Ronan, and Garai are all meanwhile garnering supporting Actress buzz (with Ronan getting a GG nod) for playing the same character, which is neat.
• I feel like this is a lock for a BP nomination, but I don't think it can beat out the juggernaut that No Country For Old Men is becoming. But it could lead the field with 10+ nominations all the same, since it's much more sonically complex than No Country (which has next to no score).
  
• This movie also features a very dirty word typed out on a typewriter, and I'm no longer six years old but I giggled every time.
• McAvoy has a fevered dream at war that trippily merges several images from earlier in the film. It's a great artistic way for the cinematography to replicate the way the score uses those typewriters, slamming doors, and footsteps through wide, empty halls to build something.