Atonement
Directed by Joe Wright
Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by Ian McEwan
Starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan
Rated R
Release date: Dec. 7, 2007 (limited)

Every fifteen years or so, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in an act of populist penance, gives Best Picture to a film that everyone likes and is just flat-out entertaining, and has no room for the mugging for Oscars they eventually got. These films include nifty little genre pieces like Casablanca, The French Connection, and The Silence of the Lambs. The last time a movie that everyone got behind for Best Picture that didn’t have lavish costumes or fake English accents was”¦ Actually it was last year. The Departed won, and I’m still in shock. That movie’s fucking GREAT!

But more often than not, the Little Gold Man goes to movies that Academy voters don’t lose sleep over. “Look at me,” these votes say, “I have displayed my impeccable and uncontestable taste to the world. I have kept the populace safe from entertainment that actually deserves accolade. I have gotten behind the movie that looks nice and takes itself deadly seriously. My job is done. I think I’ll go to bed, and then wake up and make sure all those writers will never have food to put on their tables ever, ever again.”

This kind of thinking leads to Best Picture wins for Crash, Titanic, Shakespeare In Love, The English Patient, and Braveheart which, to be quite frank, they really don’t deserve. Not when Munich, L.A. Confidential, The Thin Red Line, Fargo, and Apollo 13 are also nominated in those same years. It leads to Oscar wins for movies like Atonement, and it will win, make no mistake. It will win and all No Country For Old Men fans will be shocked and dumbfounded. And you will continue to be until next year when they pass up something great for something “important” again.

This was the attitude I took when I walked into Atonement, populist rabble-rouser that I am. I hate movies like this, and I was more than willing to crack jokes at the expense of Keira Knightley‘s scrawniness and James McAvoy‘s lack of testicles. I loves my cheap shots, and I wouldn’t be the Roddy Piper of film criticism that I am if I didn’t go after them like Britney Spears after a ham-hock. I know which side my bread is buttered on.

So if you’ve seen my star-rating, you know this isn’t the case. Atonement is a truly great film, a wholly incandescent gem. But it’s a great movie in a way the ads for the film aren’t advertising. It’s a love story, yes, but it’s a love story that goes deeper than it has any right to. Cuts to depths that I didn’t expect. It sees a bad situation and trudges it out to its bitter, logical conclusion. The love you give, boys and girls, just ain’t coming back to you, and it is this that Atonement knows all too well. Believe the hype, but just not the hype the film is selling itself as.

At an English country house in between the two World Wars, Cecilia Tallis (Knightley) wiles away her days in privileged splendor while the humble young Robbie (McAvoy) looks on her and pines. Cecilia’s young sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan) has a crush on Robbie that manifests itself in some unhealthy ways that I wouldn’t dream of giving away. All this tension culminates in the first display of mutual love between Cecilia and Robbie that Briony sees and misunderstands. Then Briony tells a vicious lie that sends Robbie to prison and into the Great War against Germany.

It is an article of the faith that writer Christopher Hampton and director Joe Wright have in their audience that instead of overplotting us to death, they wash upon us a lavish character study that deals with the ramifications of one central event instead of piling revelation after revelation upon us. Atonement is based and the novel by Ian McEwan and McEwan, much like fellow Englishman Kazuo Ishiguro, thrives on hints, allegations, things left unsaid, and the small moments of truth that come much too late. We tend to blame our problems on the world, saying “Well, it just wasn’t meant to be.” Atonement knows that many of our tribulations rest mostly on our own shoulders and our own human needs and moral vanity.

I cannot say enough good things about Keira Knightley for her performance here. When she started out, she wasn’t too much to boast about, a little obvious around the edges and a little blunt. I’ve noticed in the past couple of years that many women I know hate her for no other reason than that she can eat all she wants and still stays thin. Ladies, THERE’S AN ACTRESS IN THERE, TOO! And a thumping good one, giving Cecilia Tallis the right amount of initial petulance that blossoms naturally into understanding. She is very understated, far from the histrionic wailing that a lesser actress would give her character. And McAvoy as Robbie brings fire and gravitas to a potentially thankless role. I’ll never pick on him for playing a goat-boy in Narnia again.

English director Joe Wright is the best thing to happen to the costume drama since soft-focus photography. This is only his second film, after 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, which distilled Jane Austen’s blueprint of the modern comic love story into some sweet, sweet Altmanesque goodness, having his roaming camera wander over characters and class boundaries. Atonement does him one better, as he harnesses Hampton’s screenplay with Seamus McGarvey‘s cinematography, Sarah Greenwood‘s set design, Jacqueline Durran‘s costume design, and Paul Tothill‘s editing to fully realize a time and place and not just the here-and-now in art-deco. I admire his, and I choose my words carefully, “collusion,” with Dario Marianelli‘s (V For Vendetta) score, for it creates an almost throbbing insistence upon itself, propelling the viewer onward. Unlike most other MASTERPIECE THEATRE potential inductees, Atonement isn’t content to just sit there and exist. It pulls you deep inside the film. It wants to wow us in a Scorsese fashion. It wants to leave a lasting impression.

I call to your attention a long, uncut tracking shot in the middle of the film. Yes, it is flashy and impressive, but it also serves a purpose, drawing us into the hell of World War II. It is one of the finest shots in all the annals of film history. Contrast this to last year’s vastly overrated Children of Men, which had long tracking shots for no other reason than to make the case that the director deserved an Oscar for all his hard work.

I am aware that I have hidden in vagaries in this review for the simple fact that I just don’t want to give anything away. It has a surprise ending which, if you’ve read my reviews with any regularity, is the kind of ending I just can’t stand. But Atonement manages not only to fully justify pulling the rug out from under us, but it blends itself into theme and character development, and how having the image of yourself as a good person is more important to some than actually being a good person and doing the right thing.

In spite of all the praise I have heaped upon this movie, I am aware that some of you will still pass your judgments early on. This is just a movie designed to win Oscars and gain prestige for a studio, right? Surely this can’t be all that good if it’s a costume drama with Keira Knightley in it, right? Well allow me to consult my own personal film criticism magic eight-ball. I’ll ask it”¦

“Does Atonement deserve the Oscar over No Country For Old Men?”

Shake-a, shake-a, shake-a”¦ And it says”¦

“Too close to call. Ask again later.”

**** out of 4