BuzzFlash Reviews
Atonement (Widescreen) (DVD)
Based on the Novel by Ian McEwan
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From an online reviewer:
ATONEMENT comes closer than any other film to explain a portrait of an artist. Or, in other words, what it is really like to be in the mind of a writer. Throughout ATONEMENT Briony exemplifies the role of a writer: she enjoys feeling like God (or believing that she is better than other people) and being in control of her characters--both in her fictional and "real" world. For example, she believes she is better than other people by talking down to them (her cousin, Lola, and the twins), not respecting other people's privacy (she reads Robbie's letter to Cecilia), and lying about something that has grave consequences for other people (Robbie, Cecilia and herself). She enjoys being in control by tricking Robbie into saving her when she really wasn't drowning, and preventing Robbie and Cecilia being together since she can't have Robbie for herself. She even changes the ending of the Robbie and Cecilia story to suit her needs of a novelist. In some ways, ATONEMENT is very much like a Woody Allen movie--especially THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY. There's a scene in ATONEMENT where Robbie is in an abandoned movie theater in Dunkirk. By having him stand in front of a movie screen, it is suggested that art imitates life and life imitates art and who can tell the difference between the two. This scene is very similar to a scene in MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, which makes sense because Briony has difficulty separating her fictional world from her "real" world. She seems to think she can control the lives of the people around her as she does with the characters in her stories. I realize that the marketing department is trying to present ATONEMENT as a love story between Robbie and Cecilia. But I actually think the main character is Briony--both in the movie and book. ATONEMENT is one of the best movie adaptations--much better than THE ENGLISH PATIENT. It is also one of the best movies of the year. Of the five films nominated for Best Picture, the Academy Award should have gone to ATONEMENT. Highly recommended.
From Roger Ebert's review, Four Stars:
"Atonement" begins on joyous gossamer wings, and descends into an abyss of tragedy and loss. Its opening scenes in an English country house between the wars are like a dream of elegance, and then a 13-year-old girl sees something she misunderstands, tells a lie and destroys all possibility of happiness in three lives, including her own...
Each period and scene in the movie is compelling on its own terms, and then compelling on a deeper level as a playing out of the destiny that was sealed beside the fountain on that perfect summer's day. It is only at the end of the film, when Briony, now an aged novelist played by Vanessa Redgrave, reveals facts about the story that we realize how thoroughly, how stupidly, she has continued for a lifetime to betray Cecilia, Robbie and herself.
The structure of the McEwan novel and this film directed by Joe Wright is relentless. How many films have we seen that fascinate in every moment and then, in the last moments, pose a question about all that has gone before, one that forces us to think deeply about what betrayal and atonement might really entail?
Wright, who also directed Knightley in his first film, "Pride and Prejudice," shows a mastery of nuance and epic, sometimes in adjacent scenes. In the McEwan novel, he has a story that can hardly fail him and an ending that blindsides us with its implications. This is one of the year's best films, a certain best picture nominee.
Excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle Review:
"Atonement" soon turns into a film that puts viewers on the edge of their seats wanting to know what happens next. The turn comes no more than 20 minutes in, with an event that's so compelling and surprising that no one reading this deserves to have it spoiled. (Friendly advice: Don't read any other reviews.) Just in narrative terms, this is an enormously satisfying film, in which incidents play off other incidents in ways that are unexpected but inevitable.
But "Atonement" is more than its story. As it extends into the early, punishing years of World War II, showing Robbie's service in France, the movie takes on an epic dimension. Wright's re-creation of the scene at Dunkirk is a privilege to watch, like the experience of being transported in a time machine. Robbie and an Army friend walk along the beach and, in one long, extended shot - a masterpiece of planning and execution - Wright gives us the whole spectacle, the soldiers milling around aimlessly, the beach, the sky and a Ferris wheel in the back, and the horses having to be killed because there's nothing to feed them.
We remember Dunkirk today as a success, in which the British army was successfully evacuated to fight another day, but Wright shows Dunkirk as it must have felt at the time. Robbie walks into an abandoned movie theater, where a Jean Gabin movie (maybe "Port of Shadows") is being projected but no one is there to see it. This is a vision of the world ending, as well as a reminder that for some people - for those who didn't make it through the war - this is where the world did indeed end. Wright communicates all this without words.
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