Cast: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan.....
It is painful to see a movie fall short of itself."What if" analysis aside, "Atonement" could have been a much better movie than it turns out to be at the end. You go to the cinema hall
expecting a sensitive take on Ian McEwan's much talked about novel of the same name. Instead
you get pretty much less than what you bargained for. Inadequate character development,
a running time that is thinner than Keira Knightley, inconsistent acting, crisp editing which is
uncalled for marks "The Atonement". The film's saving grace is the overall plot coupled with
some brilliant engineered sequences which are sure to go down as some the best scenes seen in
Hollywood recently. The film yet again marks the crisp directing skills of budding director Joe
Wright after his faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice".
Film is basically the narration of two sisters and a man whose lives are ireevocably changed
when the younger sister, out of jealousy accuses the man (who is in love with the elder sister)
of a crime he did not commit. The movie is divided into three parts, each of them representing
childhood, teenage and old age of the younger sister. The first part is a well devised comment on
perception and reality. Saorise Ronan as Briony Tallis, an oddly matured child with a penchant
for writing disturbs you with her probing eyes. Keira Knightly impresses but she looks
as though she is from a concentration camp. Surely women in that age were not anorexically thin, were they? James McAvoy has a static role to play and impresses you.
I think you should watch "The Atonement" for only three things. Direction, direction and the third?? Yeah you got it wrong... cinematography. The Dunkirk evacuation sequence in the movie will go down as the one of the best tracking shots ever made. Five minutes of unedited footage in a camera that follows the protagonist's walk through this historic episode enthralls. Hats off!!
On the editing part of movie making, this is one film where the editing had to be in such a way
that there is enough time for the characters to develop. Instead a movie goer is put in a odd
position of concluding that the film was too short (usually its the other way around). True, the film is painfully short, a little over two hours. At the end you feel as though the movie
could have been easily 30-40 minutes longer.
Overall the movie could have been as popular and acclaimed as its book only if the screenplay had been a bit more fluid and a tad longer. Nonetheless its a movie to
watch out for but frankly I dont expect many oscars for this movie expect for the original score and Saorise Ronan's part.
My Rating: 7.5/10
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