Atonement

Atonement is a first-rate adaptation of a splendid Ian McEwan novel that, when I read it, I thought couldn't be turned into a film that made any sense. Instead, it is one of the best of the year, and pushes its director, Joe Wright, who previously made the charming but comparatively lightweight literary adaptation, Pride and Prejudice, into the A-list of directors.

The first act takes place on a hot English summer's day in 1935, with the alarums of war in the distance, on a large estate belonging to the Tallis family. The older brother is arriving for a visit with a friend, the scion of a chocolate manufacturer. Briony, an overly-imaginative thirteen-year-old, has written a play for the occasion, while her older sister Cecilia languidly soaks up the sun while some sort of unspoken tension exists between her and the housekeeper's son, Robbie, who has earned a scholarship to medical school. A series of misunderstandings will lead Briony to accuse Robbie of a crime which will change the lives of her, Cecelia, and most of all, Robbie.

This first portion of the film, perhaps forty-five minutes long, is an exquisitely wrought pressure-cooker, making perfectly clear what occurs in each agonizing detail, from the way Robbie ends up sending the wrong note to Cecilia to the way scenes are misinterpreted by Briony, through the use of multiple viewpoints. It's almost hard to take a breath during this sequence, especially having read the book and knowing what's coming next, but I think those who haven't will also appreciate the power of the writing and direction (the screenplay is by another old hand at literary adaptations, Christopher Hampton, who previously Oscared for Dangerous Liaisons).

The next section follows Robbie during the early months of World War II, during the evacuation of Dunkirk. The action drags a bit here, and there's a long single take following a group of soldiers on a chaotic beach that seemed a bit show-offy, and then Robbie has an emotional catharsis in a movie house that also was a bit much. The film is quickly back on solid ground, though, when we are now with Briony at age 18, training as a nurse, attempting to atone for what she now realizes what a horrible mistake.

The film ends with a coda featuring Vanessa Redgrave as an old Briony, now a famous novelist, and it's here that, as with the book, the rug is pulled out from under the reader/viewer, and we have to reevaluate everything we have just seen. Even knowing what was coming the ending has a gut-punching power that I would imagine is even more emotionally devastating to those who don't (the women sitting next to me made an audible gasp at the revelation).

There are many elements that make this film so good, starting with the writing and direction but extending to the cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, which contributes to the suffocating heat of the first section to the soot-smudged air of the war scenes, and the music by Dario Marianelli, which incorporates the clickety-clack of typewriter keys, which are so important to the story. Finally, there is the acting. James McAvoy is excellent as Robbie, while Keira Knightley is glamorous and smoldering as Cecelia.

Handing the role of Briony in addition to Redgrave are Saorsie Ronan and Romola Garai, and it is helpful that they resemble each other but it's clear that they are the same character just by their posture. Briony is a character who, though she is creative and even fanciful, as her sister describes her, also is somewhat rigid in her beliefs. Somewhere early in life she was damaged somehow, and those around her ended up paying because of it.