ATONEMENT

“A clever, ambitious, compassionate picture”

The sound of typewriter can be very haunting, used as percussion in this tragic love story; it encapsulates the emotion of the film itself.

Atonement felt like a structurally soft version of Rashomon or Snake Eyes where several same events being seen from different point of view, giving the viewer, a better look on the story. Joe Wright's interpretation of Ian McEwan's Atonement is well paced, taking Keira Knightley from his previous film, Pride and Prejudice, a more cheerful film than this one.

Like the Booker Prize winning novel, pic goes directly to a hot summer’s day in rural southeast England, 1935. As Briony Tallis (Ronan) witness an ordeal between her sister and Robbie Turner (McAvoy), the housekeeper’s son, who’s been raised almost as part of the family but is forever several social notches below them. This meeting is seen from an upstairs window by Briony, who thinks she sees Robbie mistreating her sister.

Shocked by the ordeal and confused child-adult emotions that are only clarified much later in a small flashback which reminds you of Memento’s Christopher Nolan, Briony turns against Robbie. Hardly aware of the consequences, she slanders Robbie for a crime he didn’t commit. What follows is a tragic outcome of one person’s slander.

The flashback and changing of point of view were stylistic techniques used in the novel including metafiction and psychological realism. Cut to several years later, Robbie is now a soldier and Cecilia a nurse, torn apart by war, will their love survive? Or will Briony redeem herself, realizing how grave her false accusation was?

I guess Briony wasn’t wrong at all, after all she was only 13 back then, and those domino effect events (which goes because the invisible hand of fate shows up) wouldn’t be fueled more had Robbie didn’t recklessly type indecent mail to Cecilia. Perhaps the notion that the invisible hands of fate, combined by misinterpretation of facts, is as haunting as the guilt itself.

I like is the cinematic approach, the warm summers during the first half and the stunning one-take uninterruptible evacuation scene at Dunkirk which will make Martin Scorsese jealous. Keira speaks English beautifully, with a grace just like what she did in Pride and Prejudice. This got to be one of the year's best films, although I’m an Indonesian and doesn’t even share the same cultural heritage with this film but the message is universal, how lies and deceit can be very destructive. My favourite best picture nominee.

ATONEMENT

(Focus Film)

Directed by: Joe Wright

Runtime: 123 min