Cold touchDirected by Joe Wright, written by Christopher Hampton, 122 minutes, rated R.
The new Joe Wright movie, "Atonement," has everything you could wish for in a period drama — beautiful cinematography, set design and costumes; exotic locales; and a story designed to rip out your heart and crush it when a rushed, heated romance between two young lovers is poisoned by the lies and deceit of another.
The trouble with the film, which Christopher Hampton based on Ian McEwan’s celebrated 2001 novel, is that you’re always aware that you’re watching a movie. There’s no sinking into "Atonement," no losing yourself to it, no moment when the screen fades away and the story and the characters come to the fore to overcome you. That’s a disappointment because the film’s engrossing sourcebook suggests that the movie also could have been as engrossing.
The film stars Keira Knightley as Cecilia Tallis, a privileged, brittle beauty who isn’t especially likable, which is a problem since the movie eventually asks us to feel something profound for her. Looking bored and bothered in 1935 England, Cecilia has issues with Robbie (James McAvoy), the handsome son of one of the Tallis’ longtime housekeepers (Brenda Blethyn, excellent). Robbie was put through Cambridge with Tallis money and now he is treated as something of a third-wheel member of the family.
The youngest member of the household is spooky Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a wide-eyed lass with a clipped blonde bob, a mean mouth and a tight-fisted gate who fancies herself as something of a writer.
She favors fiction, which is key, and she also has a crush on Robbie, which is critical to why she does all that she does when Robbie gives her a letter to deliver to Cecilia. Inside that envelope isn’t the love letter Robbie meant to send, but a graphic description of what Robbie would like to do to Cecilia’s genitalia. He wrote it in jest, but there it is in the envelope, which is delivered just as a series of events unspool that lead to Robbie’s arrest and a stint in the big house.
Five years later, when he’s released from prison after agreeing to serve in the war, the movie becomes about his quest to reconnect with Cecilia while Briony, now a nurse played by Romola Garai, has grown up and developed a conscience. With war’s devastation surrounding her and humbling her, she decides to atone for her sins, though in ways best left for the viewer. A final appearance by Vanessa Redgrave as the present-day Briony gives the movie a feeling it otherwise lacks.
"Atonement" isn’t a boring movie — there’s lots of lovely furniture to look at here, nevermind the appealing vision of its romantic leads — but it isn’t a very gripping movie, either, because Cecilia and Robbie aren’t allowed to create a fierce, believable bond onscreen. This is a film you watch from the sidelines, thinking how pretty Knightley looks in this gown, that bathing suit, and how the lighting in a key scene in which Cecilia and Robbie have sex against a wall of books is more interesting than the scene itself.
In the end, the film is an exercise in style over substance, even though it tries like mad to convince you that it has plenty of the latter. It doesn’t. This movie’s heart wants to beat, but the script fails to give it the hammering pulse it desires and deserves.
Grade: C+
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3 comments:
I feel you, pretty much all the way, here. I just watched it. The final reveal, if you will, is supposed to come upon you like thunder. Instead, all I could think, less than fifteen seconds after the moment, was ,"Hmm. Vanessa Redgrave is a damn good actress." The moment simply wasn't set up properly.
WHAT.
do you even have a heart?
i cried both times i saw it. it's beautiful, intense, and well written.
you're stupid.
I thought it was trite and forced. You're review is spot on.
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