Atonement

A friend of mine just asked me if I would only be writing movie reviews on this blog. Probably not. But I'm watching movies right now. And so, without further ado...

I might be the one to cast the first stone when it comes to Atonement. So be it. It is a poor adaptation of a fairly good book and features a surprisingly misdirected performance by an almost inaudible Keira Knightley. I don’t understand the hype. Not at all.

As an actor in Seattle’s bustling fringe theater scene, I understand the difference between bad acting and bad direction. As someone who read the book, I understand what Atonement the novel did well and what it did not so well. I am a peon. I am baffled as to how so many polished professionals managed to make such a misguided movie in the first place, and how so many professional critics ended up falling all over each other to laud its mediocrity once it came out.

Atonement the novel is compelling because at some point in the story each of the central characters is given a voice. Ian McEwan has done this with uncanny empathy, particularly in his descriptions of Briony Tallis as a 13 year old girl and a 77 year old woman. I am rarely asked to care about female characters in either their early teens or their late 70s and I found myself surprisingly engrossed by the challenge. After the central plot line has run its meandering course, it is this device and not the plot which makes the book a page-turner.

The screenplay makes two mistakes. First, it chooses to focus on this rather thin storyline rather than the engrossing inner lives of the characters, which means the movie evaporates after the first half hour into a true-love-against-all-odds “I will return to you” type deal. Second, and this was surely also the director’s decision, it chooses to take a very detached point of view. We watch the movie not as omniscients or even interlopers, but through a pane of thick glass. This makes the story’s final twist, so shocking in the novel, rather uninspiring and even unnecessary in the movie.

Why have critics been gushing? Maybe because they didn't have as much time as I did to think things over. I must admit that I left the theater fairly content. I was very impressed with leading man James McAvoy, whom I had only seen as Mr Tumnus the Faun and who now seems destined for well deserved stardom. Ditto for Saoirise Ronan, the second very good teenage actress I have seen in a movie this year (the other being Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra in the Golden Compass debacle). Finishing off the film with a monologue by Vanessa Redgrave also helped to muddle my critical thinking skills for a good hour. But I just couldn't shake my disappointment with Ms. Knightley, and it was that discontent that led me to the truth.