Atonement (2007) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Source: of http://gimmemorebananas.blogspot.dk/2010/08/atonement.html

Director: Joe Wright

Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton

Stars: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan

Trailer link

IMDb page

Tough odds: 

Before watching Atonement, the only thing I knew about it was that it won the golden globe for best drama over There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men back in 2008. I had no idea what it was about, who the director was or how other people feel about it, and thus has no real idea of what to expect. It was one of those titles that only exist in the foggy outskirts of your mind, one you stumble across on IMDb once in a while, but ultimately does not catch your interest.  I was more than a little sceptical going in to the film however, since I had a very hard time believing that a film I had never heard anyone talk about could be better than NCFOM and TWBB.

A setup you can only dream of:

Apprehensive and trepidatious as I was, the first hour of Atonement completely swept me off my feet. This portion of the film takes place on an English holdfast in 1935, where a young girl who thinks she knows everything there is to know about love set off a chain reaction of equally sad and ironic events, which ends up shaping the lives of everyone around her for the worse. What we have here is not just a setup like any other, but a beautiful, shakespearian tragedy of greek proportions mixed with a heavy dose of innocent Coen brothers chaos and unforgiving randomness, where every second is utilized to its fullest potential and where every character has something important to do. On its own two feet, the first hour of Atonement is easily worth the price of admission, and I count it among some of the best introductions to a film that I have ever seen.  

In the wake of great things..:

It pains me to say that after a thrilling first half and a very convincing point of no return, it kind of feels as if the film looses its feet. The three main characters leave the holdfast and break the frame of what had previously been a small, enclosed environment where everyone knew each other, and we as an audience follow them as they try to live with and accept the event that split them apart. The themes of consequence, frustration, forgiveness and longing work perfectly well here, but the magic I felt during the introduction of the film never really reappeared. There are a few sequences which work very well and remind you of how great the earlier parts of the film were, but also several scenes which feel unnecessary and a bit contrived. Going second is always tough, and the looming shadow of Atonement's first hour ultimately overwrites much of its second, in spite of its comparatively high standard. 

Taking an idea and running with it:

The main thing I love about this film is sort of a double edged sword, in that it works incredibly well at times but serves as a negative in other cases. What I am talking about is the way in which the film in some instances sort of expects its audience to accept certain things about its main characters based on emotions rather than forced symbolism; a successful example of this being why two of the main characters love each, and an unsuccessful one being why fighting in a war is mentally degenerating. I understood why McAvoy's and Knightley's characters could not live without each other within seconds of being introduced to them and did not need 45 minutes of buildup to understand why splitting them apart would mean tragedy and suffering for all, which left so much more room for the establishment of other themes.  I do not need to see McAvoy's character stumble across the bodies of twenty dead school children in order to understand that war is bad however, and had the film stuck to its guns and remained confident in its ability to sell feelings and emotions throughout its entire runtime, my over all impression of it might have been better. 

To hate or appreciate, that is the question:

As an over all product, Atonement is a very solid piece of work that I am extremely happy that I chose give a shot. People who have already seen the film will know that I left out a lot of plot and character explanation in this review, which was an entirely conscious choice on my part, because of how important complete and utter unknowings was to my personal enjoyment of the film. Keira Knightley does a good job in the film and James McAvoy is even better, but none of these two established actors manage to rival the performance of Saorise Ronan, who was only 12-years-old when she was cast. She plays the young girl who sparks the fire underneath the lies and tragedies on which the entire film is build, and she is yet another reasons why the first half of the film is significantly better than the last. I loved 50% of this film, liked 45% a lot and sort of disliked about 5%, but as a whole, I found Atonement to be a hugely enjoyable film.