Some Atonement on the Weekend

I have to admit I did not sit down to watch Atonement this weekend with any measure of anticipation. I think Kiera Knightley is too scrawny to be cast as anything other than a junkie. The fact that she is a Chanel model still baffles me.

I am also a longstanding Ian McEwan fan who questioned how a filmmaker would be able to capture that classic McEwan atmosphere of half-truths and tension.

By the end, I was glad I'd seen the film. The first part, which is by far the strongest, does indeed deliver a nerve-wracking high wire act of conflict, desire and colliding identities. We follow at the heels of the precocious Briony, whose innocent crush on Robbie the gardener fuels her revulsion when she accidentally reads a draft of a letter he has written to her sister, Cecilia, played by Keira Knightley.

The revelation of a single word drives a course of events that leads to Robbie's imprisonment. This is where the movie seems to lose its direction, as it stands back and observes Robbie's participation in the war with a sometimes-frustrating distance. It is as if the audience is intended to lose their beloved along with Cecilia, which might have worked if this film were Cecilia's story. But it's not, and we are also left to guess at the choices that lead her to disregard her family fortune in favour of nursing.

That said, the film is gorgeous to watch, and the scene of a war torn French beach overtaken by hundreds of thousands of disillusioned British troops is one that will remain with me for a long time.

Perhaps most remarkably, Knightley not only shows some talent in her performance, she is actually quite striking. And as my mother-in-law noted, that James MacAvoy is one hot kisser.