Atonement

Atonement

“Atonement” starts in a joyful manner, and then plunges into tragedy. The initial scenes set in an English country house between the wars are a vision of elegance, and then a 13-year old girl misinterprets what she sees, tells a lie and destroys all possibility of happiness in three lives, including her own.

The movie’s beginning is like an exultant gasp at pure heedless life; it demonstrates the theory that the highest happiness ever reached by mankind was reached by life in an English country house between the wars more true for those upstairs than those downstairs, but never mind: that’s always been so.

We meet Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), the bold, beautiful older daughter of an old family, and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), who mows their grass and went to Oxford thanks to Cecilia’s father. Though social class forbids such things in 1935 Britain, they are powerfully attracted to each other, which leads to sex beside the fountain on the lawn.

This encounter is seen from an upstairs window by Cecilia’s younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who thinks she sees Robbie mistreating her sister in his idea of rude sex play. Later we will see this scene again from Robbie and Cecilia’s point of view; we will understand it involves their first expression of mutual love. But Briony does not know any of this; she has a crush on Robbie herself, reads an intercepted letter and interrupts another private tryst, and her jealousy turns corrosive until she tells the lie that seals Robbie out of Cecilia’s reach forever.

Ah! But how easily had everything moved earlier on! And how could it not have? Keira Knightley as Cecilia strides around with such style that I must say I have little hope left for American words ever since hearing our accents compared to hers they are like baked potatoes tramping across pavement. She is too beautiful, too graceful, too young; and Robbie may only be a groundsman but he’s blue collar brilliant and in love with her! They should be together.

But you know this already if you’ve read the Ian McEwan best seller on which the movie has been so faithfully based. And indeed Mr. McEwan one of our most gifted living novelists allows the consequences of Briony’s malicious behavior to grow offstage until we catch up with everyone again during the early days of World War Two: Robbie has enlisted and been posted to France; Cecilia is a nurse in London; Briony now 18 is also a nurse (and an aspiring writer) trying to make amends for what she knows was her tragic mistake. The three meet once in London; it shows them all what they have lost.

The film cuts back and forth between the war in France and the bombing of London, and there is a single (apparently) unbroken shot of the beach at Dunkirk that is one of the great takes in film history, achieved or augmented with CGI though it is. (If it looks real, in movie logic, it is real.) After an agonizing trek from behind enemy lines, Robbie is among the troops waiting to be evacuated, in a Dunkirk much more of a bloody mess than legend would have us believe. In the months before, the lovers have written, promising each other the happiness they have earned.

Every period and scene inside the movie is compelling on its own terms, then again compelling on an even deeper level as a playing out of the destiny that was sealed beside the fountain on that perfect summer’s day. It’s just toward it’s end whenever Briony now an aged novelist played by Vanessa Redgrave tells facts about this story do we realize just how completely she has continued for a lifetime to betray Cecilia as well as herself.

The structure of both McEwan novel which film directed by Joe Wright are relentless. How many movies have you seen that fascinated every moment but posed question only at last moments about all preceding events forcing deep thinking on true nature betrayal & atonement?

Wright who also directed Knightley during his first film, “Pride And Prejudice”,2005 shows mastery over subtlety alongside grandeur sometimes right next door each other scene wise. In McEwan novel he has got story hardly fail him along with ending blindsiding us these implications this being one year bests films certain best picture nominee.

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