Atonement

**** Stars

When it comes to critiquing films, I usually post a review the same day or night I see the movie just to make sure certain plot points and dialogue are still fresh in my mind. But after seeing Joe Wright's adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel, I felt uncertain about how I felt towards Atonement. It left me sad, distraught, and confused. It made me question the very existence of love. So I tested my patience. Day after day, its presence is frequently gandering inside my mind and I can't shake it off. Atonement is the antonym of Disney's Enchanted where not every story ends happily ever after. This is a tragedy on the highest accord.

Unfortunately, I was actually in the middle of the book when I saw the film version. I wanted to finish the book first, but I didn't want to risk missing it before it left the theaters. This seems to be one of the most talked about films of the season. It now has been nominated for seven Oscars, even with Wright being snubbed for best director. James McAvoy and Keira Knightley are both wonderfully cast as Robbie Turner and Cecilia Tallis, two young adults who forge a secret passion towards eachother, in which suffer dire consequences.

The film begins in 1935 England, with Cecilia and her family lounging around their enormous mansion that is so clean and elegant, that it is sometimes painful to see. Cecilia's thirteen year-old sister Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan, who deserves her Oscar nomination) who like any other thirteen year-old, wants the attention completely on her. Her room is as clean as a room can get, with her toys lined up, her bed perfectly made, and a feeling that if a toy fell out of place, she would weep in self-dissapointment. I would personally go mad in a house like this.

So when you're young, rich, and have nothing to do all day, it would seem pretty easy for you're imagination to become reality, right? Briony, who has a secret crush on Robbie, begins to notice a spark between him and Cecilia. Before dinner, Robbie wants to write Cecilia a letter to express his feelings. As he goes through several copies, he writes one for a self pleasure (what he really wants to do to her). When writing the novel, McEwan needed something to stand out. What word would totally confuse and scare a thirteen year old? Well, Robbie's letter is sexual, with the word "c**t" bulging off the page. He accidentally delivers that letter to Cecilia, with Briony as the messenger.

Briony opens the letter and sees this word. She doesn't really understand it, but she thinks she does. Later that evening, she hands the letter to Cecilia. While Cecilia is offended, she can't help but resist a love that has been dwindling in her mind. Her and Robbie sneak off to a room in the house and passionately make love, until Briony walks in.

Now after seeing this letter and witnessing this event, Briony wants Robbie out of Cecilia's life. So when their cousin is raped that night by a house-guest, it is Briony's chance to make sure Cecilia doesn't get with him. She falsely-accuses Robbie as the rapist. Robbie is sent to jail, then the army. Before he leaves, the two declare their love for eachother (Cecilia knows he didn't do it, she and Robbie know that Briony lied). For the rest of her life, Briony is forced to live with this event gorged in the very front of her mind. Her act of atonement forces the three to live their life in tragedy.

Joe Wright's direction here is simply superb. In a five minute and thirty second tracking shot, Wright captures the horror of World War II, when Robbie walks through a battlefield of limbs, death, and destruction. The shot is in the caliber of Orson Welles, with such shots as the famous opening in Touch of Evil.

Atonement is an epic love story with the same level of tragedy as Titanic. Two people, meant for eachother, are forced to live out their love in ways no one should. But the power of love is so esoteric and essential to a humans heart, in this case a heart stripped of its right to warm another.