307 - Atonement

“Atonement” is a tragic love story that conceals its many weaknesses with a shiny veneer of impressive visuals. Good love stories on film are rare, and have to tread carefully between sappy and stale. “Atonement” manages the difficult feat of avoiding the thin line and treading on both sides of it, being a glossy, sentimental rice cake of a film.

It begins in the 1930s on one of those vast British estates where the English gather around and talk about the most boring things imaginable. Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), one of the women of the estate, and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the gardener, are in love, but unable to express their feelings for one another. This problem gets solved when Robbie accidentally sends Cecilia an obscene letter, the kind that get my friends restraining orders, but this actually works to his favor.

Their sordid little courtship is witnessed from afar by Briony (Oscar nominated Saoirse Ronan), Cecilia’s thirteen-year-old sister. At least it looks pretty sordid to Briony; a combination of childish naivete and an attraction to Robbie results in her labeling him a “sex maniac.” If Briony were older she’d know that term applies to all men, but whatever.

Later, when Briony witnesses the sexual assault of her cousin by a wealthy family friend, she labels Robbie the culprit, and I probably don’t have to tell you that the poorer man finds himself taking the blame. A few years pass, World War II breaks out, and Robbie is released from prison to join the army. He is trapped in France during the British retreat in 1940 while, back in England, Cecilia and Briony (now played by Romola Garai) are nurses tending to the endless numbers of wounded coming in.

Though “Atonement” follows their story through the years, we never come to know anything insightful about Robbie and Cecilia other than that they love another. Even their time together is largely wordless, relying on the actors ability to appear lovelorn and look pretty while doing it (both of which they do admirably). In fact, making them pretty essentially seems to be the filmmaker’s attempt at character development; if the actors are good looking and young, then the audience can like them instinctively, and extras such as character development can be treated at vestigial organs to be discarded.

Later on, Briony becomes the film’s focus, the guilt over her false accusations leading to a lifetime of suffering. It ends concludes with a reveal of drastic phoniness, a massively annoying slight, one that serves to highlight the hollowness of what has come before. I won’t reveal exactly what transpires, but I’ll warn that the easily frustrated or those with the radical notion that a film shouldn’t deliberately waste the audience’s time should seriously consider seeing something else.

Director Joe Wright spruces up the narrative with a shifting chronology and snazzy visuals, which works well enough at fooling the audience into thinking they’re watching something of substance, at least until it becomes evident otherwise at about the halfway point. Thus far, the film has at least developed a story, only to then bounce back and fourth between the characters as they go about their lives and Look Sad about what a waste it all is. Sort of like the film itself.

2 out of 5