Atonement Reviews

[Highly rated reviewer]

everyone who left a 5 star rating needs to atone for their sins!

Absolutely the most boring film ever! I'm a literary student and usually love adaptations but this film is so slow moving. Dont go there!

[Highly rated reviewer]

An impossible adaptation?

In answer to the question as to whether Atonement could be adapted successfully for the screen the answer has to be...almost, but not quite. McEwan's brilliant novel with its themes of redemption and morality could never transfer perfectly but writer Christopher Hampton and director Joe Wright, give it a damn good try.

Starting in 1935 the film follows a doomed romance and how an over-imaginative girl's actions affect the lives of those around her. The film is stylish and intriguing but ultimately the novel's emotional gut-punch can't be delivered as successfully on film and its up to an uneasy coda to clarify everything for those who haven't read the novel.

Despite its limitations this is a very enjoyable film with some remarkable set-pieces and an intelligence that raises it above the run-of the-mill period romance film.

Overrated !!!

Don't believe the hype! Despite most of the critics in the film industry claiming this to be one of the best films of the year, as a piece of entertainment it really isn't that good. While the performances from most of the cast are good, the movie is well filmed (look out for a great tracking shot on the beaches of Dunkirk) and wartime London is recreated very well this can only carry a film so far. In a running time of around 2 hours, there needs to be more happening to maintain the viewers interest. Yet another case of style over content. We never really get to know the two main characters (Knightley & McAvoy) well enough to care what happens to them and as a result very quickly lose interest. While the end of the film tried to be clever it just didn't work and resulted in several people turning to the person next to them with a look as if to say 'Is that it?'.

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[Highly rated reviewer]

The power of words

The thing that struck me the most after watching Atonement was that I wouldn’t have enjoyed half as much if I head read the book beforehand. I would undoubtedly have still wanted to see the film but the final revelation ….well it wouldn’t have been a revelation would it and would thus have robbed the film of much of its emotional power.

Ian McEwen’s novel was widely regarded as un-filmable seeing as it’s a story about how redemption could be achieved through the written word but the screenplay by Christopher Hampton achieves this effortlessly with the time jumping narrative blending seamlessly in and unfurling the little details that elucidate the central act and its motivations.

The film opens on a wealthy English estate in 1935 , home of the Tallis family . Cecelia Tallis ( Keira Knightley) has something going on with the family groundkeeper Robbie Turner( James McAvoy).His father , we quickly learn was a faithful servant to the family for a long time and they have obliged by putting Robbie through medical school. When Cecelia’s precocious younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan) misinterprets an exchange between Cecelia and Robbie as she watches them from her bedroom window it kick-starts a tragic chain of events. She then intercepts a letter from Robbie to her elder sister with a word( Its arguably the most powerful word in the English language and caused the Americans to baulk at its inclusion but so pivotal is it to the plot the director refused to remove it) inadvertently contained therein that cements Briony,s altered perception of Robbie and this leads to a shockingly erroneous allegation against Robbie that lands him in prison and thus means his only escape is to enlist with the out break of war.

The films second act finds Robbie leading ( though he has no officer status they succeed to his greater education and accent)a rag tag bunch of fellow soldiers trying to reach Dunkirk. The scenes of the beaches full of soldiers awaiting evacuation are quite mesmeric .Filmed at Redcar ,with the maximum number of extras allowed on a film set there is one long panning shot that lasts over four minutes but was filmed in only five takes. Some have criticised this as mere pretension or showing off , a move designed to say look at the money we spent.( The set cost one million pounds) Maybe so but the end results more than compensate for any studio or directorial posturing.

The third act reintroduces us to Briony , now 18 ( Played by 25 year old Romola Garia) now a volunteer nurse in London , her first act of atonement .After finally going to see her sister in person after her numerous letters requesting a meeting have been ignored Briony admits she may have been mistaken about her allegation . The films coda featuring a quite stunning performance from Vanessa Redgrave as the aging dying Briony in 1999 and shifts our acuity of events once again and shows the importance of words to the story ,something underlined by the constant clanking of type writer keys in the soundtrack .

Director Joe Wright watched lots of British 1940,s films to get the period feel right and succeeds admirably .The cast are all terrific with McAvoy following up his superb performance in “The Last King Of Scotland” with an assured performance playing a honest decent soul without making him dull or righteous. Kiera Knightley isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (Some wags have dubbed her “Ikea” Knightley) but here she is fine , and sensationally gorgeous, though she is out-acted by Romala Garia in their set piece .The film looks magnificent and it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying and emotionally powerful piece of cinema hitting our screens for some time. I hadn’t read the book before as I said , but I certainly shall now.

Deepy Depressing

The fact that this film is so universally applauded and is set to clean up at the Oscars is depressing beyond measure. It is a truly awful film and it is bizarre that no-one has publicly outed it as such.

Essentially, Atonement is a boring film badly acted. That would be fine and there are a million such films which don't deserve the condemnation of this one. What makes Atonement quite so terrible is its presentation of itself as a great epic covering the great themes of love, betrayal, war and atonement. It is nothing of the sort.

Without McEwan's exceptional prose to seduce the viewer, the film exposes what a trite and nasty novel Atonement actually was. On the screen the perverse morality of the story is shockingly stark.

A thirteen year old girl makes a childish mistake and is punished for it for the rest of her life. Instead of condemning the ghastly characters who treat the girl so badly, the film seems to expect us to agree with them, and concur that the poor girl must spend the rest of her life atoning for her mistake.

The crassness of this central conceit is breathtaking, but the film doesn't stop there. What the film is really about is Love, and the great Love in Atonement is between two woodenly acted characters who have known each other for about five minutes before they have sex and then, through an ineptly contrived series of coincidences, are forced to separate. Then comes the war and the book's black heart is truly revealed. The Second World War, we learn, wasn't one of the most horrific and violent catastrophes of human history, it was actually rather beautiful, as shown by a horribly misguided seven-minute tracking shot of the Dunkirk evacuation. Furthermore we learn that the millions who died in the war and its massive historical consequences were irrelevant, its only real significance for the makers of this offensive film is as a neat means for the two spoiled protagonists to get back together and exact revenge on the child who accidentally interrupted their teenage romance.

It really is that horrible.

What a let down. Yawns a plenty

Had high hopes for this with the garnering of award nominations. All the critics must be in their eighties and dozed off watching it hence enjoyed it... Is a truly awful film nothing happens go's on forever and just so poor it is untrue.

AVOID THIS. You'l understand after you watch it. Paint dries.

Overhyped and Over Here

Sorry, beautiful film, but the plot doesn't hang together! You are Cecelia. Your younger sister accuses your boyfriend of a heinous crime. Clearly you don't believe her, yet you say nothing whatsoever to her about it, and allow said boyfriend to be incarcerated for over 3 years? Come on, do me a favour! And the cringe-making ending,with Briony trying to justify her actions - awful! The Emporer's new clothes......!

[Highly rated reviewer]

Tasty but a tad over-egged

I can see why Atonement will be popular and can kind of understand its critical acclaim. It's easy on the eye and passes a couple of hours pleasantly enough but it suffers from both trying too hard and being lazy.

The images are impressive, with one or two exceptional tableau ('there’s no Bryony', for example) but the Director stuffs too much in; there's no rest for the eye. The Dunkirk beach scene is far too busy (though I liked the silhouetted soldier on the Ferris wheel) and sometimes the quite literal representation in pictures of each word of dialogue was farcical (the bomb flooding the tunnel, especially).

The emotions and motives of the characters are clearly spelt out and repeated for all to understand (while also flattering the audience's intelligence). Setting the story in the 1930s helps with awkward questions about how people actually would react and feel as the story progresses; relying on a caricature of the past is a bit lazy. The film also played safe with its innovations, such as the 'book within a book' and the 'film within a film', it was like visiting the Director’s shopping list of favourite moments of cinema history.

For a voyage into the human soul, at the end Atonement left me feeling a bit flat. It's entertaining rather than challenging; a 3 star film made to 4 star technical specifications (with the odd 5 star cinematic flourish).

Utterly brilliant

To think of film as art, this film is a work of art, in every single way. From the direction, to the acting (my friend is a famous actor and agrees), to the cinematography and camerawork, to Knightley's fabulous wardrobe. Once the credits rolled, the packed audience with whom I saw it all paused before getting up, unlike most where people already have their keys ready, having been blown away by such an emotional and affecting film. I haven't felt like that since Crash. To say that you can empathise with the characters is an understatement, McAvoy is of course magnificent, the young Briony is remarkable too, but contrary to what people may suspect I feel Knightley was truly brilliant and not an emotional vacuum as some may wish to think about previous performances (though I do love her). Extraordinarly accurate and convincing, utterly compelling and, as I have already said, a masterly work of art, this is one of, if not the, finest films of our time. REALLY.

A fantastic adaptation

Having seen many films that didn't live up to the book they were adapted from - it was refreshing to see a film stick as faithfully to the source as time and budget would allow. A very moving film that I enjoyed as much as the book.