Product Description: From the award-winning director of Pride and Prejudice comes a stunning critically acclaimed epic story of love. When a young girl catches her sister in a passionate embrace with a childhood friend her jealousy drives her to tell a lie that will irrevocably change the course of all their lives forever. Academy Award® nominee Keira Knightley and James McAvoy lead an all-star cast in the film critics are hailing "the year's best picture" (Thelma Adams US Weekly).System Requirements:Running Time: 123 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/LOVE & ROMANCE Rating: R UPC: 025193328526 Manufacturer No: 61033285
Amazon.com: Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) gives Ian McEwan's bestselling novel a sumptuous treatment for the screen that should come to be regarded as one of the defining films of the epic romantic drama. Indeed, everything about this film stems from those three words: there is little here that is not epic, romantic, and dramatic, and Atonement is a film that masterfully expresses the overarching sense of adventure and emotion that such stories are meant to convey. In this instance, the story centers around the love story of highborn Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and housekeeper's son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy, in a star-making turn), in England shortly before World War II. Despite their class differences, they are powerfully attracted to each other, and just as their relationship begins Robbie is tragically forced away due to false accusations from Cecilia's younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan). She has a crush on Robbie, too, and after reading a private letter he sent to Cecilia, and then witnessing the first expression of their mutual love but mistaking it for mistreatment, her resentment grows until it leads to her telling the lie that will send Robbie away. Soon World War II breaks out; Robbie enlists and is posted to France, Cecilia is a nurse in London, and Briony, now age 18 and aware of what she has done, tries to atone for her actions--but none of them will be able to get back what they have lost. Knightley and McAvoy are perfectly cast as the young star crossed lovers, and the young Ronan is particularly impressive, but it's clear that the real star of this film is the director. Wright allows Atonement to revel in every moment of its story and each scene is compelling in its own way, but that now famous extended shot with Robbie on the beach at Dunkirk--filmed in one take and sure to be considered one of the great long tracking shots in film history--is the most memorable moment in this remarkable film. Atonement is an excellent example of what can happen when a great book meets great filmmaking. This is one that is not to be missed. --Daniel Vancini
The Conclusion Makes It All Worthwhile I'm not eager to revisit the commentary that dozens of amazon reviewers have already discussed regarding "Atonement". I merely would like to bring up something I found striking, which doesn't seem to have been mentioned here - and that is, that if an adolescent girl finds it challenging to distinguish between a lover and a predator; well, DUH! I'm a retired person in late middle-age, and I'm STILL confused on that issue; LOL! I don't mean to suggest that her false testimony was warranted, but for Pete's sake how could that Robbie character be so careless with a typewriter, AND misdeliver said abomination to boot?! Am I the only person who found this extremely alarming? It's the primary reason that the "love" story didn't ring true for me, and I would have thought that Keira Knightley's character would have been turned off as well...
Nevertheless, I "liked" the movie, but not for the usual reasons (like the hype one reads on the DVD cover). "Atonement" was for me neither "epic" or "romantic". But I enjoyed the pace of it, and the three people who portrayed Briony at different ages were terrific. Vanessa Redgrave's performance at the end made everything come together for me, and ratcheted up the quality of the entire film a couple of notches in just that final moment (though I don't buy her "vascular dementia" story; she was far too cognizant to be the recipient of such a diagnosis at that point). But there is much food for thought in her explanation (as a writer) for her "final" book. For me it suggested that life and fate would have intervened to separate the lovers even if the young Briony had NOT committed her betrayal. Stuff happens, and fairy tale endings are what FICTION is made of...
French without Tears In ATONEMENT just misses being a masterpiece, but some of this has to be attributed to the moviemaker's obsessive fidelity to the source text--for once, they should have thrown out the book and just kept the cinematic elements. Here the actors work overtime to embody the ultra-romantic lovers Ian McEwan created in his novel, but the one is so painfully thin, and the other so oddly short, that actually I didn't even think the army would take him, even if they were so desperate they were recruiting convicts during the dark days preceding Dunkirk.
Knightley and McAvoy are otherwise perfectly convincing and oh, how I wanted them to have a happy life together! Compounding what you might call "identification" problems in the movie is the way the director has used three different actresses to play the part of Briony Tallis. The young girl is very good, but it's the grown up girl who's the best, Romola Garai, here outshining everything else she's done on the screen. None other than Vanessa Redgrave plays Briony as an elderly woman, now a world famous novelist on the order of Iris Murdoch--Redgrave is a good ten years too young to play her convincingly, as the real life character would be really, really, really old, while Redgrave looks ready to play Renee Richards all over again. She sort of called in the part, oddly enough, and maybe a relief after the anguish all the other actors have to express. It is Redgrave who has to put over the big post modern twist in the story, and whether or not that falls flat depends on how much you believe her slightly wry delivery. Her explanation for her character's actions may leave you walking away thinking, did she really expect us to believe her?
We were in a crowded theater when James McAvoy is typing the incriminating letter that gets him into so much trouble, one letter at a time, type, type, type, each character filling the screen, and a little boy in the audience asks his mother, what does that word spell Mama? Everyone laughed and I didn't hear what the mother told her son. It was just awful, why take your toddlers to a movie called "Atonement"? Or maybe you should take them out when the lovers onscreen start typing out four letter words in the late nineteen thirties.
Deeply emotional and thoroughly compelling So incredibly well done and very deeply touching to the heart and mind. Many unexpected twists.
A Lot of Stir "Atonement" has pleasant moments. I didn't enjoy it very much, but I think it probably is good. Saoirse Ronan who was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress as the young Briony Tallis does an excellent job of creating a lot of stir. Ramola Garai takes over as Briony at age 18 and does a good job of trying to atone for her actions as a young girl. Vanessa Redgrave is excellent, albeit in a thankless role, as Briony right before her death. Redgrave has been nominated for Oscars for "Morgan!" (1966), "Isadora" (1968), "Mary Queen of Scots" (1971), "The Bostonians" (1984), and "Howard's End" (1992). She won a supporting Oscar in 1977 for "Julia." I have been watching her captivating performance in Evening. As the aging author telling this tale, she is reduced to a TV interview show format. Keira Knightly who was nominated for an Oscar for "Pride & Prejudice" in 2005 looks good. James McAvoy, who plays Robbie Turner, was nominated by the British Academy Awards & the Golden Globes for this film. He had previously been nominated for an Oscar in the powerful The Last King of Scotland (Widescreen Edition). He's always very good in his films; however "Atonement" keeps him rather boxed in emotionally, despite the excellent scenes in the war. Brenda Blethyn plays his mother Grace Turner in a nice cameo. The best performance of the film for me was in the cameo of Jeremie Renier as Luc Cornet, a French soldier who dies from a scull injury in front of Briony. It's a short but powerful performance. Belgian Renier was nominated as Best Actor by the European Film Awards for L' enfant (The Child) in which he sells his baby. In "Atonement," he is touching with his mind going between memory and the present.
My greatest disappointment with "Atonement" was the screenplay which tries to be clever by jumping back and forth with flashbacks and giving us only part of the story to be unhooked at the director's discretion. Thus, rather than just telling a fairly interesting tale, we must wonder at how clever the screenwriter was. It doesn't work and the final scenes like the flooded tunnel come as downer footnotes. If depressing cinema is your forte, get your hanky for this one. The performances and cinematography, however, are exquisite. Enjoy!
a boring Atonement I really wanted to like this film because of the actors involved in it. James McAvoy,who was excellent in "The Last King of Scotland" & "Narnia", Keira Knightly, and Vanessa Redgrave were the lures here plus the film had received excellent reviews. However, the direction was plodding and that was a big surprise to me because I had liked Joe Wright's direction in the previous film to this, "Pride & Prejudice" also with Keira Knightley. Because of this and despite McAvoy's and Redgrave's excellent acting, I felt disengaged from the film. Also Knightley somehow lacks that "something" that made the late Audrey Hepburn magnetic and so I felt little of McAvoy's passion for her because of this. So regretfully, 2 stars which means okay but no bonnets for this very over-rated film (check out "The French Lieutenant's Woman" for comparison).
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