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Topic: Atonement (2007)
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 12-30-2007 03:01 PM
...................SPOILERS AHEAD!............................
In the beginning was the word...
Thou shalt not bear false witness...
The sound track loudly proclaims the first theme by the clacking of a typewriter over a dark screen. We become aware thet this is a literary film, based on Ian McEwan's novel.
"What is the worst word you can possibly think of?"
Words form Briony's hobby as child playwright; Robby's mis-delivered words cause Briony to act, because of jealousy and sexual immaturity, bearing false witness after a crime is committed, leading to disasterous events. The clacking Coronas
continue their chorus of doom.
Words connect the actions through letters, and the need for atonement, through speech and writings, tortures all three characters. Atonement is thwarted until Briony, grown old, con-fesses by writing the story we have just seen, in a book. Has she finally completed her atonement, albeit too late for all?
Briony the successful author, at the film's conclusion, is played by Helen Mirin, who manages to look convincingly like the child actor playing young Briony. This is a familiar role for Ms Mirin, having played Inspector Jane Tennyson in the long running British TV series shown on PBS in the US as "Prime Suspect." As Inspector Tennyson, she often indicts and prosecutes perverts and child molestors; in "Atonement" she causes suffering to the innocent man she had a crush on as a child.
I like the crisp portrayal of British upper-class life, photographed outdoors in sunshine and indoors and at night with
much attention to shadows and darkness. Being somewhat an Anglophile, I find refreshing British speech and historical re-creations, as in "The Forsyte Saga" and "Brideshead Revisited"
shown on Masterpiece Theater on PBS. I love seeing the carriages, costumes, old cars and mansions.
But I didn't like the use of camera shake and mis-focus to blurr the sex scene, although the director probably wanted to convey Briony's shock at witnesing the lovers' tryst and not cmprehending their love. To me it appeared clumsy. And I was initially puzzled by some scenes being shown twice, until at the end, I understood they were shown once as witnessed by a child, and again as mature Briony wrote them in her book of atonement.
Joe Wright and his art director created a massive inferno in depicting the chaos at Dunkirk. I have always thought of Dunkirk as a heroic rescue by a vast armada of civilian pleasure and fishing boats, of the British and French armies ambushed there. I had only seen newsreel footage from the air.
But "Atonement" showed none of that. Instead the film shows undisciplined men, many wounded and dying, and others drunk or without hope of rescue, as morale and chains of command broke down.
And the scenes of Robert, the housekeeper's son, taken from university to prison and then wandering behind German lines to Dunkirk, remind me of similar wandering in "The Longest Day" another anti-heroic war film.
I liked this film, though I think the Dunkirk episode, great as it is in art direction and cinematography, is capable of forming an entirely other film. I found "Atonement" absorbing but over-long.
Monday, December24, 2007 at Kew Gardens Cinema 1:00 PM
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Mike Schindler
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1039
From: Oak Park, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2002
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posted 04-22-2008 08:53 AM
Paul Thomas Anderson tells a story about how he snuck into a second-run theater to watch BOOGIE NIGHTS, and was horrified the presentation. The print was damaged, the anamorphic lens was out of alignment, the sound was mono, etc. At first he was really upset. But then he thought to himself, "Does the movie still work? If it doesn't, that means I haven't done my job as a filmmaker."
I think this is true. If a movie can't still be enjoyed, no matter how bad the print may be, then it's probably not a good movie to begin with.
That being said, I don't think even a pristine 70mm print of ATONEMENT would make it worth watching.
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