Back in September when I first received assets for Atonement, I’ll admit, at first glance I thought it was a typical period-piece tragic love story. I figured there’s a war and lovers are kept apart by it (you can’t blame me, the first images were of Keira Knightley in a war-time nurse’s uniform and James McAvoy in Army gear!). And while I don’t necessarily have a problem with this genre, I just figured Atonement was average fare, nothing to really take notice of.

Then I watched the trailer and the clips and read a little bit about the book by Ian McEwan and as you can see where I wrote here, while Atonement is labeled a “British romance,” it’s really much more than that.

I actually did get to see Atonement, which only had a limited theatrical run. And one of these days maybe I’ll get around to reviewing it, but in the meantime I’ll direct you to CNN, which has an article about the film’s amazing long tracking shot.

Those of you who’ve seen Atonement know exactly which shot this is — McAvoy’s young British WWII soldier Robbie arrives at France’s Dunkirk beach. I don’t want to go into detail about what happens next, but director Joe Wright and his director of photography Seamus McGarvey give us a 5 1/2-minute continuous take, which Wright explains was done out of necessity.

This scene really is something spectacular and was created with the help of 1,000 extras on location. Aside from thinking “Whoa, has this been one continuous shot so far?” during this scene, I also had a feeling that all of those people on the beach were actually there — not inserted through CGI (I was right).

The film’s dramatic tension kept me captivated throughout, but during the long shot, after two or so minutes I lost track of what was happening and instead became fixated on catching when the shot ends. So, perhaps the shot was too long, because detracts from the story, and with Atonement up for so many awards, one might think that Wright was thinking “Best Director Oscar shot.”

Either way, Wright did a great job and the movie was topnotch. All the acting was fine, but I don’t foresee any awards being given in those areas. It’s not really an “acting” movie and there really wasn’t all that much dialogue (I think the most dialogue-heavy parts were spoken in French!). Atonement is definitely all about the cinematography, and if I ever get around to writing that review, well, I’ll probably say something to that effect.