Philadelphia Weekly

A sweeping period epic reeking of good taste, elaborate costume design and a prestigious highfalutin pedigree, Atonement appears to be the kind of movie that makes you hate the Oscars. Adapted by playwright Christopher Hampton from Ian McEwan's breathlessly acclaimed, doom-laden love story spanning WWII and beyond, the prospect of watching this one conjured unpleasant memories of that college girlfriend who made me sit through The English Patient ... twice.

Luckily our master of ceremonies here is director Joe Wright, whose hearty, visually dynamic 2005 take on Pride and Prejudice lent a rough-hewn urgency and unexpected delights to a tale told so often that I'd sort of been hoping never to hear a peep out of Mr. Darcy ever again. But talk about accomplishing the impossible. Not only did Wright make a Jane Austen film that could be described as rollicking, he also somehow transformed that previously petulant bag of bones Keira Knightley into a radiant, honest-to-God movie star.

Knightley is back for Atonement, starring as Cecilia Tallis and glowing yet again as a brittle poor-little-rich-girl who can't shake her hankering for the housekeeper's son Robbie (James McAvoy, the suddenly ubiquitous Scottish actor gobbling up all the roles Ewan McGregor has gotten too old to play). Cecilia's baby sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan) also has a bit of a bug for this goofy young gardener, but as she's still only 13, these strange, incomprehensible feelings tend to find outlets in odd outbursts and tragic misinterpretations.

The first hour of the film is masterfully assembled, zipping breathlessly back and forth in time throughout the seemingly innocuous events of one languid summer's day in 1935. Wright's fluid camerawork is key (the man does adore his Steadicam), catching mysterious fragments of interactions before doubling back later to reveal their unexpected contexts. Class differences, familial tensions and the imminent war simmer just beneath the surface of every conversation, plus some adroitly handled innuendo upon the arrival of a shady family friend (Benedict Cumberbatch, an actor with a name straight out of Dickens. I have nothing much to say about his performance; I just wanted to type his name).

Robbie and Cecilia's bickering, lusty connection comes through not just in Knightley and McAvoy's ardent performances, but also in Wright's sly blocking which, coupled with editor Paul Tothill's nimble editing, inextricably ties these characters together, despite us seeing them together in just a handful of moments. (When Cecilia dives into a swimming pool, they cut to Robbie rising out of a bathtub, as if completing a single movement. Neat.)

By the end of the day, Briony has done a bad, bad thing. Then suddenly we leap forward a few years into the thick of WWII, and Atonement never recovers.

Gone are the savvy class observations and messy sexuality, as Hampton's screenplay drifts into more conceptual, literary territory. No longer the prickly, hormonal youths of the film's first half, Robbie and Cecilia deflate into generic star-crossed lovers, and Saiorse Ronan's captivatingly unsympathetic Briony is replaced by the infinitely duller actress Romola Garai, fumbling for redemption as a nurse working the trenches.

Even as you feel the movie ebbing away, it's still impossible not to marvel at Wright's technical virtuosity. The camera hurtles forward, relentlessly in motion, as Dario Marianelli's score apes the clackety-clack of Briony's restless typewriter, audibly linking this tangled weave of flashbacks and flash-forwards.

Wright overplays his young genius card just once, with a ludicrously elaborate, painstakingly choreographed five-minute unbroken shot of preevacuation Dunkirk. This cast-of-thousands, look-at-me camera trick feels less like an organic product of the story and more like Wright and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey just saw Children of Men and wanted to top it.

The final kicker, which has Vanessa Redgrave as an elderly Briony in the present day, is the kind of shock reveal that probably played brilliantly in McEwan's novel. But it doesn't translate on-screen, and pushes the entire experience of the movie into complete abstraction, something that makes sense in your head but not your heart.

On the bright side, Atonement is still a half-hour shorter than The English Patient.

Atonement
B
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy
Opens Fri., Dec. 7