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Review: “Atonement”
By kyle | December 3, 2007
INTERIOR DECORATION
Kyle Smith review of “Atonement”
“Atonement” belongs in a theater–”Masterpiece Theater.”
At the outset of this beautifully designed, ornate, carefully acted melodrama I had an idea that never occurred to me while reading Ian McEwan’s book–one of the most acclaimed novels of recent years but one whose reputation will unfortunately suffer as a result of this film.
Oh, no, I thought as the film unspooled. A misguided-letter movie? Really? In 2007?
The clanking Victorian mechanism of McEwan’s plot doesn’t leap out from the book because of the hushed spareness of his delicate yet explosive prose. A glance can be everything in the pages of “Atonement.” On the screen, it’s just a glance.
“Pride and Prejudice” director Joe Wright has no answer for McEwan’s style–McEwan himself has described it as “interior”–and, as if to make up for it, midway through the film he devises an extraordinarily complicated Steadicam shot meant to take in the bizarre and dreadful experience of being a British soldier stranded at Dunkirk while waiting for either someone’s fishing boat to rescue you or for the invading Nazis to pound you like a hard-shell crab. The shot is magnificent–”Saving Private Ryan” meets Fellini–but it is the only memorable element to this BBC-style film.
Wright makes much of the pounding of a typewriter, as though the writing ambitions of young Briony Tallis (played by three actresses over a period of decades) are what will thwart the erotic longings of her older sister (Emaciatrix Keira Knightley, who is getting thinner with each role and is on track to disappear entirely by 2013), a wealthy girl in 1930s England, and the cook’s son (James McAvoy), a bright lad who is being sent to Oxford by the master of the house but is nevertheless not of the proper social class to be wooing a posh young lady. Typewriter sound effects frequently are played up to create a sinister air that isn’t quite justified by the action, which depends on what is after all an honest mistake made by a child.
That misdirected letter, and two sexual encounters that are misinterpreted by the prepubescent young Briony, lead to not only a disruption in two lives but in a criminal conviction. Years later, the McAvoy character is a soldier at Dunkirk in some of the grimmest days of WW II. In partial atonement for what she’s done, Briony is now a nurse dealing with severely wounded British troops returning home, in some cases to die.
The twist in the book is heartbreaking and shocking in McEwan’s hands but though the film is entirely faithful to his story, you can’t be shocked by the same twist twice, and “Atonement” has been read by millions. Anyway, it comes far too late in the film to overcome the hint of exquisite manipulation in this plot.
Moreover, things go bad for the lovers far too soon. They have spent only a few minutes of the film together before events begin to tear at them. It’s like going to see ”Titanic” and finding that the projectionist has skipped the first hour and 45 minutes because he wants to skip all that dopey romance stuff to get right to the tragedy. Tragedy is expensive, though: you have to save up for it.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Kyle, you seem to have missed the Christ allegory completely. You might find the following illuminating:
What is quite astonishing has been the almost total inability of film critics on both sides of the Atlantic to (so far) correctly “read†this film. Even those critics who play up their literary pretensions, by claiming to have read the book, (and there are some pompous assholes out there) still don’t seem to have got it.
There is a lot of largely irrelevant chatter about the English class system, which if it exists, as a system, is about money and power, just as it is in the USA. And neither are the Tallis family aristocrats, minor or otherwise. They are simply wealthy. The book makes clear that the family fortune comes from Cecilia’s grandfather who made his money from padlocks and ironmongery. Quite American, don’t you think?
Some critics have helpfully prefaced their reviews by pasting in a dictionary definition of the word atonement: expiation of guilt, reparation for wrong and injury etc. In so limiting the definition, they spectacularly miss the point, by a millimeter.
Try this: In Christian theology the atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ which made possible the reconciliation between God and creation.
Don’t stop reading; I am not a Jesus Freak or even a regular churchgoer. Ian McEwan is an atheist.
But there is no escaping the fact that underpinning both the book and the movie is a Christian allegory. It’s obvious, and in your face from the beginning, but no one seems to have noticed! Where to begin? Perhaps with a name - Robbie!
Jesus saith unto her, Mary (Magdalene, at the resurrection). She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Also in Mark, twice, Matthew and John.
We learn that Robbie comes from humble beginnings, he wants to become a healer and in the book, at least, he has liberal, essentially Christian, politics. James McAvoy brilliantly portrays him as an empathetic, Christ like, figure, a fact some critics have alluded to.
He is betrayed by a previous admirer. The family close ranks against him to protect their wealth and status. The authorities cannot be bothered to investigate the truth. (Pilate?).
He is, metaphorically, crucified and cast in with the thieves.
Now comes the bit which really annoys me about many critics’ comments – the Dunkirk beach scene. Several have said that this is irrelevant, that it slows up the show, and that it is merely a piece of cinematic showing off.
In fact, this is the catharsis. It is the “Passion†of Robbie Turner. The walk along the beach is his Via Dolorosa. What would they have Joe Wright do? Label the Stations of the Cross? Have him carrying his Cross with a Crown of Thorns? Isn’t it enough that his side has been pierced?
Goodness me, if they still haven’t got it, Robbie rises from the dead in the penultimate scene.
So, what is the book/movie about? First of all, it’s a rattling good love story and a page turner. Secondly it’s about Briony’s, ultimately futile, attempt to expiate her guilt for the crucified Robbie through a fiction – whilst also giving him an afterlife and immortality. It’s about the novelists God- like power over his/her creations and, ultimately, it’s an atheistic message. About how fact can be blurred into fiction through the retelling and rewriting of history. The Bible anyone?
A couple of other things you might have missed in the movie.
Look out for when Briony looks through the stained glass (sic.) window which has the word Matilda on it and then refer to the poem of the same name by Hilaire Belloc.
The operatic duet played as the lovers dress for dinner is O Soave Fanciulla, from La Boheme. Check out the English translation of the lyrics on the net and see just how appropriate they are.
As above: the hymn being sung by the troops in the bandstand at Dunkirk is: Dear Lord and Father of Mankind which is both ironic and sadly appropriate. It is not, as some twit of a so-called critic has said, Men of Harlech
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.
The movie being shown in the Dunkirk cinema is the 1938, Le Quai des Brumes. Check out the synopsis.
http://www.awardsdaily.com/2007/12/understanding-atonement.html
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Terrific anaylsis! I had not thought of the scene at Dunkirk as his Via Dolorosa,but it fits in. It seemed to me that he was walking through a Breughel painting. In his vision of his saint like mother she washes his feet.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:53 am
A dozen obscure christian images/allegories doth not a good movie make. In my opinion Atonement is certainly a well-made film, the first third being particularly captivating, but its fatal flaw lies in the piss-poor relationship between Knightley and McAvoy. I had absolutely no idea that when she was bitching towards him at the beginning it was to hide her secret-feelings-of-looovvvvveee *eye roll*. Poor acting? Or an obtuse script? Whatever the case, this movie was lacking something, and I think the review is spot-on.