Review of Atonement

Atonement

The day that I saw I Am Legend, I saw a clip from Atonement on television that unsold me on seeing the full film. Earlier tonight, I was walking by a cinema playing Atonement, as it was about to start. I like James McAvoy (Last King of Scotland) and Keira Knightley (Love Actually), so I went on a whim.

The film started set at a gorgeous manor in the English countryside, and the sexual tension between who I thought were the protagonists was alluring. The wrong man is accused of a crime separating lovers before sending the man to fight in World War II. I thought that I was sorry that I had almost not seen the movie.

Things were going well, except the movie had a terrible problem with timing. "4 Years Later" would flash on the screen, but apparently, it was 5 years? This was either a mistake or poorly adding to the main theme of the film, which is that what you are watching does not actually happen to the characters. I do not mean it is fictional. I mean that within the fiction, what you see is not what happened. It's silly.

The clip I had seen on TV came, and I was correct. The scene was an over the top cliche. The lovers' mics were mixed so unnaturally high that you could hear Keira Knightley breathing loudly booming over the other sounds like passing traffic and speaking voices. The soldier and war time nurse kiss. McAvoy whispers "I love you" as his lover is taken away by bus. He runs after the bus, but it's gone. I'm sure you've seen it before.

The footage of the 3 displaced soldiers stomping through the French countryside is good, but you should stop watching the movie when McAvoy promises that he will stop screaming in his sleep, and fast forward to the flooding. After you see the image of the flooding London tube station, hit stop.

The most refreshing and beautiful scenes in the film are the scenes shot with the camera submerged in water. They make a nice trilogy. Visually, Atonement is beautiful, but it is not enough. The film runs out of energy and then it drowns. Halfway through, Atonement becomes a cross between the ending of Saw and the Celine Dion music video for the song from Titanic. The story had stalled. How many times can we hear the lovers say "Come back to me?" It literally happens at least 5 times in a few minutes, except that they are only separated twice.

The audience is left with the real protagonist, who I personally disliked for what she had done to the lovers. I actually thought the projectionist screwed up when all of a sudden, we were watching an elderly woman in a TV studio in 2007 babbling. In creative writing, writers learn to show instead of tell. The ending actually tells, and it is a film! I am sure that the book has to be better. They must have run out of money for shooting the ending with a dolly. There are eternal close ups of an old woman talking directly into the camera explaining the movie to you, as if you are an idiot. Go watch A Very Long Engagement instead.

Posted on 01/09/08 by: A Nick 08:02 AM

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