ATONEMENT
Atonement, dir Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley,James McAvoy, Vanessa Redgrave
The film of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement summons up many literary antecedents, such as L.P.Hartley’s The Go-Between or D.H.Lawrence’s Women in Love (or a kind of compendium or abridgement of many Lawrence orLawrence-like novels or stories). The word nostalgia breezes eerily across the film’s opening shots, a bigstately home, like Mandalay in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca or hosts of other possible period stately homes which might form a list too long forthis review. The sepia tinted shots of the big house unfold then into its interiors, a labyrinthine placewith multi-various rooms, halls, landings, all leading onto further rooms, halls, landings. Many of the scenes and dialogues seem rather contrived, as if they had been made with the English Heritage Industry in mind (ie “Briony your a brick.”Etc etc. Has anyone ever heard the word brick ever deployed in such a colloquialism in everyday speech,or is it simply an empty aristocratic slang made up for use in these English Heritage Films?) In fact the script is so shot through with clichés of upper-classmores and customs that it becomes difficult at time sto take the film at all seriously. In one scene, after the evacuation of Dunkirk, one of the central characters, Briony Tallis, manages an act of atonement(that term infested with shades of meaning from the Judeo-Christian Tradition) by comforting a youngFrench soldier in terms of her own Franglais. This amounts to an exchange of Je suis Ian, Je suis Tallis. Je habite Paris. Clearly McEwan’s daytrip to Calais had not been wasted or perhaps this is some lost version of the Ballymena French so prevalent in this reviewers Belfast youth.
Atonement says nothing of importance about McEwan’snovel, or about novels in general, about life in England, Britain or anywhere, or even, and this perhaps saddest of all, about films and film-making. McEwan’s novelistic usage of time lapse and retrospective is curtailed by the fact that he begin sat the very beginning of the events depicted. Obviously it all would have been so much more powerful, but so obviously retrospective, to begin at the end and work back. Ultimately the ending seems lame and tacked on as a result. The real film is tobe found at the beginning, when, as a result of the baneful English class system and conventions of sex and relationships, Robbie (played by McAvoy) sends a letter to his loved one Cecila (played by Knightley, seemingly a model pretending to be an actress) via their go-between Briony. Predictably Briony reads this letter, a chain of unfortunate events thus unfolds, built upon a 13 year-old girls mis-perception of what is a totally frank letter. In fact she probably understands that the letter is intended for her, as so many letters given to other people seem to be, fails to comprehend her role as a go-between, insinuating Robbie as the rapist of her cousin Lola. Robbie goes to gaol but is given remission provided he joins the army. The makers of this film have clearly invested quite a lot in a film of shadows not substance. For all that the film is convincing, were it not for therecollection of so many antecedents and influences: in fact, too many. The scenes set in and around theDunkirk evacuation do little to propel the story, seem tacked on to the film as a Ps, thus providing a definite sense of identity, historical context. However, this could easily be left out, seems to serve as nothing more than an excuse for the cinematographer and his crew to recreate a period.In short Atonement is a tired, derivative film with little to say. There are some definite non-actors in leading roles, but also some definite actors too.
Paul Murphy, Ealing, London
The film of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement summons up many literary antecedents, such as L.P.Hartley’s The Go-Between or D.H.Lawrence’s Women in Love (or a kind of compendium or abridgement of many Lawrence orLawrence-like novels or stories). The word nostalgia breezes eerily across the film’s opening shots, a bigstately home, like Mandalay in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca or hosts of other possible period stately homes which might form a list too long forthis review. The sepia tinted shots of the big house unfold then into its interiors, a labyrinthine placewith multi-various rooms, halls, landings, all leading onto further rooms, halls, landings. Many of the scenes and dialogues seem rather contrived, as if they had been made with the English Heritage Industry in mind (ie “Briony your a brick.”Etc etc. Has anyone ever heard the word brick ever deployed in such a colloquialism in everyday speech,or is it simply an empty aristocratic slang made up for use in these English Heritage Films?) In fact the script is so shot through with clichés of upper-classmores and customs that it becomes difficult at time sto take the film at all seriously. In one scene, after the evacuation of Dunkirk, one of the central characters, Briony Tallis, manages an act of atonement(that term infested with shades of meaning from the Judeo-Christian Tradition) by comforting a youngFrench soldier in terms of her own Franglais. This amounts to an exchange of Je suis Ian, Je suis Tallis. Je habite Paris. Clearly McEwan’s daytrip to Calais had not been wasted or perhaps this is some lost version of the Ballymena French so prevalent in this reviewers Belfast youth.
Atonement says nothing of importance about McEwan’snovel, or about novels in general, about life in England, Britain or anywhere, or even, and this perhaps saddest of all, about films and film-making. McEwan’s novelistic usage of time lapse and retrospective is curtailed by the fact that he begin sat the very beginning of the events depicted. Obviously it all would have been so much more powerful, but so obviously retrospective, to begin at the end and work back. Ultimately the ending seems lame and tacked on as a result. The real film is tobe found at the beginning, when, as a result of the baneful English class system and conventions of sex and relationships, Robbie (played by McAvoy) sends a letter to his loved one Cecila (played by Knightley, seemingly a model pretending to be an actress) via their go-between Briony. Predictably Briony reads this letter, a chain of unfortunate events thus unfolds, built upon a 13 year-old girls mis-perception of what is a totally frank letter. In fact she probably understands that the letter is intended for her, as so many letters given to other people seem to be, fails to comprehend her role as a go-between, insinuating Robbie as the rapist of her cousin Lola. Robbie goes to gaol but is given remission provided he joins the army. The makers of this film have clearly invested quite a lot in a film of shadows not substance. For all that the film is convincing, were it not for therecollection of so many antecedents and influences: in fact, too many. The scenes set in and around theDunkirk evacuation do little to propel the story, seem tacked on to the film as a Ps, thus providing a definite sense of identity, historical context. However, this could easily be left out, seems to serve as nothing more than an excuse for the cinematographer and his crew to recreate a period.In short Atonement is a tired, derivative film with little to say. There are some definite non-actors in leading roles, but also some definite actors too.
Paul Murphy, Ealing, London
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