-Maff Caponi
Atonement really
should be two movies. It takes place in two separate time periods and locations
and the two are very sadly separate in quality. The first half of the movie is
extraordinary, featuring excellent acting from Keira Knightley and better
acting from some little girl who plays Knightley’s sister. It is all very
British and clever and well-written and focused, making superb use of doubling
back in time to explain key, unexplained scenes in their full glory. As far as
romance movies go, it’s not bad.
That’s not even fair. The
first half is one of the higher quality movies to come around in a while. The
dialogue is realistic, the acting is very perfect and believable, and the story
is actually engaging. There’s even a wonderful shot of Keira Knightley in a wet
under-dress that is drenched to her skin, in a very revealing and not so
properly-British way. Knightley and some stud named James McAvoy experience
some of the most “could cut it with a dull butter knife” sexual tension ever
recorded on film, nearly all of which Knightley’s weird little sister (who I am
told is named Briony and played by Saoirse
Ronan, whoever that is) misinterprets as McAvoy being a dangerous sex maniac,
including a rather sketchy bout of lovemaking in a library. Add Briony’s own
feelings towards McAvoy, throw in some coincidence and mild circumstantial
evidence and all the wisdom of a 13 year old and McAvoy is sent to prison for a
crime he did not commit.
This is where the movie stops being clever and well-executed and,
coincidentally, starts into its second half (technically, it’s only the second
of four parts, but I couldn’t tell where the second ended and the third began
and the fourth lasted all of three minutes so we’ll divide it this way). McAvoy
is released from prison on the condition that he be sent to fight Germany in
World War II, which seems nothing more than an unrealistic plot device to
further separate the two lovers, but it does make for some pretty backdrops.
Joe Wright, the director of this bipolar creation, spends five minutes panning
over one such backdrop, the infamous evacuation of Dunkirk, in an attempt to
show the chaos of the day. Yes, there are thousands of people in the shots and
a man with a pistol is shooting horses at point blank range, for whatever good
that does. Nobody cares, though. Wright does this too often, showing an
admittedly beautiful shot for too long with no dialogue and receives,
accordingly, no audience interest.
There really isn’t a plot to overview for the rest of the movie, which
does make the job easy. Ronan is replaced by Romola Garai, who is Briony 5
years in the future and does a much less spectacular job. I just plain didn’t
like her, but what do I know of playing the non-romantic female lead in a romance
blockbuster? There’s so little going on in this nearly hour long segment of the
movie that we’ll just skip it and move on. Suffice it to say that McAvoy is in
the army, Briony is a nurse and witnesses all of the appropriate “horrors of
war” as some sort of penance for what she did and her sister is still royally
pissed off.
The movie ends with a decently unpredicted plot twist that did
considerably raise my opinion of the whole shenanigan, but the promise that was
held at the beginning of the movie and then shot in the head like the poor line
of horses is so maddening. If only Wright had followed traditional Hollywood
style and made multiple movies, the first a grand, critically-acclaimed
masterpiece, the second a trashy, lifeless thing of emptiness. Then, at least,
we would have had one really good movie, instead of this decent but sad
disappointment.