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Said playhouse belongs to the intelligent and impetuous thirteen-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), and it is a replica of the very same estate in which she has just completed her first play, one she intends to perform that evening. Among the guests, she invites Robbie (James McAvoy), a housekeeper’s son who helps the family that has recently helped him achieve higher education alongside Briony’s older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley).

Briony pines for Robbie as he pines for Cecilia, and over the course of this particularly hot summer afternoon, the young girl gets the wrong impression from several incidents involving the discreet lovers and hastily proceeds to make false accusations against Robbie, resulting in his wrongful arrest. Five years later: Robbie goes to war, Cecilia gets to wait, and Briony (now played by Romola Garai) treats whatever wounds she can as a nurse while coming to terms the full consequences of her actions as the girl who cried “rape”.

For the first forty-five minutes, director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice) and writer Christopher Hampton adapt Ian McEwan’s acclaimed novel into a masterful manor-set melodrama of reckless passion and noble deeds misconstrued. Maintaining the recurring motif of windows and mirrors, even the narrative itself becomes a collection of reflections and refractions, a facet made all the more apparent by revelations to come and all the more effective by the crisp cutting of P&P editor Paul Tothill. The passion between McAvoy and Prejudice alum Knightley steadily simmers, peaking with a most heated encounter in the library, as Ronan, armed with puppy love and one deathly stare, goes about misinterpreting whatever she may.

However, for a story so concerned with matters of perspective, Atonement seems to lose some once the c-word, in its varied incarnations, sends poor Robbie seaward. Maybe sins just aren’t nearly as captivating in their dirt-under-nails aftermath as they are in the reflection of a silver spoon, but the scope never becomes quite as grand as it was intimate, a rift only reinforced by the appearance of a much-discussed tracking shot following Robbie amidst the evacuation of Dunkirk. Running nearly five minutes, the admittedly impressive technical prowess of “the Shot” inadvertently outshines its dramatic context, unlike the staggering tracking shots on display this time last year in Children of Men; it’s more awe than awww.

As the midsection shifts its focus towards Robbie, McAvoy displays a relatively restrained performance considering the hell he’s put through, and for her constant period wardrobe and moderately reduced role, Knightley displays some – dare I say – maturity to go with those oft-derided cheekbones of hers. Garai (Vanity Fair) carries on Briony’s bob haircut, trembling voice, and relative naďveté regarding the aftermath of her indictment. The story comes back around, fittingly enough, to Briony’s titular quest for redemption, shaking its seemingly prestige-magnet trappings of their dust along the way and working up to a strikingly post-modern conclusion, including a brief yet potent appearance by Vanessa Redgrave and a cameo by filmmaker Anthony Minghella, whose work bears a retroactively flattering comparison to that of the young maverick Wright.

In terms of sheer craft, Wright’s film is perpetually lush on the eyes and lovely to the ears, with respective credit going to Seamus McGarvey’s magnificent lensing and Dario Marianelli’s wonderfully ominous score. As a whole, whilst serving as both an undeniably sumptuous romance and a remarkably haunting tale of betrayal, 'Atonement' simply cannot stand to encompass all of this and World War II.

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originally posted: 12/25/07 11:26:12
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