|
|
 |
| |
Keira Knightley and James McAvoy in Atonement |
Budget constraints lower the tone of wartime romance
ATONEMENT
Directed by Joe Wright
Certificate 15
THERE has been so much hype about this movie of bestseller Ian McEwan’s “book that could never be filmed” that audiences will go into the cinema expecting to witness a masterpiece.
I’m sorry, but they won’t get it.
What they will get is a meticulously crafted and complex love story, sensitively directed (by Joe Wright), exquisitely photographed (by Seamus McGarvey) with a dazzling screenplay (from Christopher Hampton), where in the brilliant first hour every frame is a joy to behold and every line of dialogue a treat for the listener, drawing us into its myriad secrets until we are captivated by both the situation and the players.
The film opens in the summer of 1935 in the country mansion of the well-to-do Tallis family, sweltering in the hottest day of the year.
We find young Briony (Saoirse Ronan), a headstrong 13-year-old with a vivid imagination, staring out of her window to spy on her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) by the fountain flirting with Robbie (James McAvoy), a handsome young man employed as a gardener while he prepares for medical university.
Worse, she reads a letter he wrote to his beloved intended only for himself as an outpouring of his sexual desires, even down to the “c” word!
The implication is plain: he’s a sex maniac. She’s wrong.
The couple are deeply in love. But when another young girl in the house is assaulted Briony, reports Robbie to the authorities, and he is carted off to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
Fast forward five years to the war, and the beaches of Dunkirk where Robbie wanders shell-shocked amid the turmoil of the evacuation.
Here the film loses its pace and its grip. There is something unreal about the beach scenes, despite one amazing tracking shot that lasts all of five minutes with the camera swooping over the soldiers who are drinking, singing, weeping and even shooting their horses.
When you learn that budget constraints forced the director to use only 1,000 men to depict 338,000, you can see the problems.
Wright is at his best in the elegant country house atmosphere of the 1930s, redolent of his 2000 triumph Pride and Prejudice.
With the flicker of an eyelid at a dinner party he can convey a subtle change of mood.
He is less comfortable on the big canvas, and it shows.
But this is an important piece of work that will surely garner its fair share of awards in the coming months. |
 |
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
