Atonement (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I saw this over the weekend. I was optimistic bcuaase of the reviews but found it somewhat disappointing. It wasn’t completely terrible (it was nowhere near as unwatchable as The English Patient) , but I found it kind of lightweight and ultimately pointless.

The plot summary is as follows:

In 1935 England, a rich A teenage girl sees her older sister humping the help. Out of jealousy and spite (the younger girl also has a crush on this stableboy or whatever he is), she falsely names him as the attacker after a sexual assault on her cousin by some visting, snobby, pedophile buddy of her brother’s.

Supposedly, the stableboy and the older sister (Kiera Knightly) are in love, but the movie shows us no real background for this and their relationship never seems convincing or carries any weight. We see a scene where Kiera Knightly strips down to her underwear and dives into a fountain in front of him (a scene which contains a very nice shot of Miss Knightly in a soaking wet, translucent slip. I think I saw toe, but I might have been hallucinating). The younger sister watches this scene unhappily through a window. Then the stableboy types a note telling Knightly that he wants to munch her box (I understand completely), then discards it and types another more polite sort of love letter. He enlists the younger sister to deliver the note but gives her the obsene note by mistake. The younger sister reads it and is displeased. She delivers it to Knightly who isn’t that bugged by it. Then she bangs the stableboy in the library and the younger sister catches them. That’s pretty much the extent of the groundwork for the allegedly tragic, lifelong love story which the younger sister will spend the rest of the movie trying to “atone” for having wrecked.
The younger sister’s lie sends the stableboy to jail and the movie breaks into three basic storylines.

Th first follows the stableboy who gets out of jail and then goes off to fight the Germans in WWII. There is an interesting, unbroken tracking shot of the Dunkirk evacuation which is probably the best scene in the movie, but which gets the date wrong. Aside from that, this storyline is not very compelling. It’s just James McAvoy moping around like a douche and being sick. I think I dozed off during some of these scenes.

The other major storyline follows Briony (the younger sister) who is now grown up and feeling guilty. She’s working as a nurse as a kind of self-imposed pennance. Very little happens her either except for one pretty cool scene where she sees a dude’s brains sticking out of his skull.

The third storyline follows Knightly, who is also a nurse. She’s estranged from her family and from her sister but not much happens here either.

Eventually, there is a climax of sorts, where all three characters meet and Briony tries to apologize and express remorse for sending home slice to the joint.

Then there is an epilogue with Briony as an old lady which contains a revelation I won’t reveal here but which does not pack as much punch as it should.

The movie is nicely photographed and produced. It’s not a piece of shit. But I think the main reason it doesn’t quite work, and that the ending fails to be powerful, is that the relationship between Knightly an McAvoy – the relationship which is supposed to be the emotional center of the story – is both underwritten and under-acted. Knightly is a piece of wood. McAvoy is a little better but tygescript never really gives him anything to do.

They spend the bulk of the movie pining for each other. It doesn’t tug the heartstrings, though, because the movie does not spend any time establishing their relationship. We are only given a couple of scenes – probably less than 5 minutes of screen time – to establish that they are in love with each other, but even those scenes are unconvincing, unmoving and unemotional. I partially blame Knightly (who is hot but cannot act), but I also have to blame the writing and direction which never shows us why these two care about each other beyond a sexual attraction.

Ultimately, the movie also seems to be thematically kind of pointless…or rather, is has a point, of sorts (lying is bad…m’kay…), but it’s not a very interesting or insightful point.

2

I saw this a couple of weekends ago and I couldn’t put my finger on why I disliked it so much. It wasn’t a bad movie, I just felt that it could’ve been so much more and this is why. It was just over two hours long but it still felt like there were a couple of scenes cut out of the beginning of the movie.

Having said that, next time I’m at a bar I’m busting out that pickup line.

3

I think that her naming the boy as the would be rapist is more than just about jealousy and spite. She honestly thought that he was a sex fiend–especially after she saw the note. Briony saying later, that her book was about a girl who sees two people from her window, and that she thinks she understands, but doesn’t really, really says a lot. It felt like that whole first part was really about a child, who is clearly intelligent but still a child, not understanding the world or sex or relationships and seeing it through the only lens that she has at the time.

4

I agree completely with your assessment of the film. The major flaw is that we never really see the lovers together doing happy lover stuff. Well, the library scene, maybe, but the kid kinda’ wrecks that. Their few scenes together are just downers, so it’s hard for us to pine for the return of a happiness we never really saw in the first place. Some may agrue that this is the point, an opportunity that was there but never fully seized. But it didn’t feel that way to me.

I liked how the typing sound on the soundtrack was used. As someone who hadn’t read the book, this seemed clever to me in the end.

5

ugh, that plotline is so much worse than anything I could have imagined through the ambiguous commerical trailers. I probably wouldn’t have plunked down $12 to see it anyway, but now I definitely won’t.

6

I couldn’t disagree more with the OP. I thought McAvoy and Knightley did an outstanding job with their scenes, especially McAvoy. I haven’t read the book, but I felt that the amount of time devoted to their relationship was more than adequate. They had grown up together but were still in vastly different social classes. The sexual tension between them at the fountain and in the library scene was palpable. The cafe scene when they finally meet again after years apart was especially great acting; at first they are awkward, tentative and polite, and you could see so much pain and sadness written on both their faces.

As far as a thematic point, I don’t think it was simply “lying is bad.” It’s a question of whether Briony really every atoned for her lie. She tries to make up for it by giving them an ending they never really had; problem is, she’s only continuing her control over their lives. She just can’t give it up even after everything that’s happened. It’s a copout and an evasion and she doesn’t really have to accept the consequences of her actions.

7

I agree with the OP and am inclined to think I actively dislike the movie more than he does.

You’re right about the relationship–we have no investment in them as a couple because we barely know them at all before their “love scene”. Is it sad that they’re separated and that he’s accused falsely? Yes. But the movie strains under the weight of trying to make it a “tragic” love story, and it’s not. Sure, it’s sad–they both die–but that’s not the same thing.

Certainly, the relationship between Briony and Robbie is more intriguing than his love for Cecilia, and the best parts of the movie (the first 40-minutes, plus the one swimming flashback) are when her infatuation and jealousy are explored (and Saoirse Ronan gives the best performance in the film), but this is still given short shrift and eventually abandoned altogether.

Because the film, instead, shifts to two people who have had one heated moment and then a quick tea reunion. Yes, they have a “backstory”, but it’s unseen by us, so we have to rely on the believability of the chemistry, and I’m afraid Knightley isn’t even in the same league as McAvoy in mining depths from an underdeveloped character, so we’re asked to take the true eternal quality of their love (she does disinherit herself after all) purely on faith. And that’s simply not enough (plus it doesn’t help that the only reason they’re together at all is because of the absurd contrivance re: the mixup with the notes).

Then, the movie goes into Epic Movie mode. I don’t know how big a part this plays in the book, but the film goes to great lengths trying to impress us with the sheer sweep and scope of the British retreat. I don’t remember Dunkirk being handled very often in movies (my favorite moment is in In Which We Serve), but the beach tracking shot is self-consciously (almost self-congratualtingly) showy and interferes with the raw, emotional potential of the setpiece. Similarly, the hospital scenes have some power, except the film still is preoccupied with what Briony is going through, but her guilt is only superficially related to the devastation she’s witnessing firsthand due to the war.

And then there’s the ending. Ugh. [spoiler]Essentially, Briony “comes clean”. The big mea culpa with her sister and Robbie never happens. Both the lovers die and she feels bad about it. So how can we interpret the ending? Either way, the answer fails to satisfy.

Briony’s effort to provide a revisionist version of what happened (to “memorialize” the pair) is either (A) valorized, or (B) hopelessly inadequate in relation to her sin.

If the answer is A, then it’s a thoroughly specious conceit, giving self-indulgent “atonement” to someone who could never really atone for what she’s done. There’s a bit of narcissistic navel-gazing in thinking that changing her story, giving them a “happy ending”, could even remotely make up for what she did. But in writing this story and giving them this ending (instead of internalizing her guilt and finding a more private peace in forgiving herself), she’s clearly trying to do that. Even if she characterizes it as only a “little thing”, it’s simply not good enough.

If the answer is B, then who cares? We know lying is bad, we know war creates suffering, we know not all lovers are reunited. Why have the story build up to an “epiphany” that’s already clearly self-evident to everyone except the main character?

It’s tempting to say that the film doesn’t take a stand about these positions, and that we’re left to interpret which of these positions better fits the other themes of the film.

The problem is that the film does take a position–it’s in Vanessa Redgrave’s clearly sympathetic performance, it’s in the imaginary footage of Robbie & Cecilia frolicking on the coast, it’s in the Masterpiece-Theatre, sun-dappled pretty-period presentation. Robbie & Cecilia die ghastly deaths, but the film can’t refrain from making everything look gorgeous in an unresolutely non-ironic way. So in showing us the lovers reunited in the surf, in encouraging a great elderly actress to portray her character with very little actual self-awareness about the futility of her gesture, the movie encourages us to feel that, in some incredibly small measure, Briony does find a type of atonement.

Which, to these eyes, is a load of crap. There is a way that the movie might have persuaded me of this, but this film certainly never did. Which is why I dislike the film so much–like the relationship at the beginning of the film, we’re asked to feel something for a character that the narrative itself hasn’t come close to earning on its own merits. Which is why the movie strikes me as remarkably lazy and an emotional cheat.[/spoiler]

8

All of the flaws the OP identifies in the movie are inherent to the book, as well. Other than the first third of the novel, which was extremely well-written and interesting and gasp contained forward narrative action, I thought the book was stagnant, insipid, and poorly sketched out. Plus (and I don’t know how this is handled in the movie) I was never entirely convinced by the book that

Paul Marshall (Leon’s friend) was actually the one who committed the sexual assault, if indeed it was a sexual assault and not a consensual act.

The book provides no actual evidence that this is so other than Briony’s assumption, and in fact there are several indications that it might not have actually happened the way she ultimately believes it did.

Which could have been nicely handled, had they made more of the ambiguity, but they didn’t and it wasn’t.

9

In response to the spoiler, in the film Briony saw the attacker and, IIRC, saw him well enough identify him and know that she was framing MacAvoy.

I knew who it was from the moment Briony saw the attack, but I don’t recall if they showed his face at that time - I more likely used the handy rule of conservation of character.

Also, in the movie it looked more like a rape than a consensual act.

Lastly, I also don’t believe that Briony came close to atoning for what she did.

10

I thought it was pretty clear that it was an assault (did he go through with it? I thought Briony showed up in time) from the girl’s reaction. She told Briony that he’d tried to rape her, but that she had no idea who it was. Granted, the other sex act in the library was consensual and misinterpreted, but I thought that this one was definitely an act of assault. It’s a bit disturbing that it could be misinterpreted…but whatever.

Anyway, I also think that going on about how beautiful or lacking the love story was misses the point. It’s not really about these two people who are in love or in lust, at all. It’s about Briony’s mistake as a child and her attempt to try and atone for it–and perhaps the realization that she’ll never be able to do so.

11

I once had a Finance professor who would love to spend a good 45+ minutes on the chalk board, going through an intricate problem only to (purposely!) wind up with the wrong answer… then he would spend the next 15 minutes showing where he (purposely) messed up and what would happen if he did it correctly. And the reason why he did this was, in his words, “to show you where most people get it wrong.”

Atonement was a lot like that guy. We spent 45 minutes finding out how her lie affected two people, complete with the emotional payoff of their chewing Briony’s ass… then the last 15 minutes we watched this “ending” get erased from the board with a bunch of prattle about how the story we just saw was the wrong solution, the atonement Briony wished she had received. :rolleyes:

I think the real “issue” with this movie is that Briony never really suffers for her sin. She goes on to have a fulfilling life, finally at the end of it partially owning up what she did to two people who haven’t existed in over 60 years. Even then, with this new book she’s now earning money off their story and their destruction.

I got the impression that the film was supposed to set her up as a sympathetic character, but, to me, failed miserably at the task. I think the only way to make Briony sympathetic would’ve been to make her 6+ years younger - at her age in the film, she was old enough to have known better.

12

ArchiveGuy, I agree with everything you wrote in your spoiler box.

I found the film emotionally affecting (I cried when I was supposed to), and I’ll watch James McAvoy in anything, so that was nice. The cinematography was pretty and inspired (particularly the moment when Briony walks in on the couple in the library). The little girl who played Briony was completely believable as a precocious, coddled, well-to-do child. Romola Garai was much more sympathetic here than as snotty Gwendolyn in “Daniel Deronda,” and Keira Knightley didn’t irritate me, which is a first. So, the movie wasn’t bad.

But that was it.

The ending weakens everything and causes the story to be ultimately meaningless.

Exactly.

I’ve tried forcing myself to read the novel several times before this and I’ve never made it past page 50. The movie has my gratitude for convincing me to stop trying and find a better book to read.

13

If I was a Roger Ebert-type, I’d write a review several paragraphs long about what is so wrong with this film and then give it 3 stars. Some major points:

  1. Somebody desperately wanted to show that they could make a Film. Not a movie, a Film. Good for the old resume. So we have that ridiculously long shot on the beach at Dunkirk. It goes on forever. Why? Also, a nice period piece so lots of retro costumes, sets, etc. Also looks good. After all that, who needs a story? Just gets in the way.

  2. KK somehow decided that mumbling = accent. How sweet. What did you say? Didn’t catch it since you mumbled it! I understood all the others, shoot, I understood most everybody in “Train Spotting.” This was just plain mumbling.

  3. Ronan didn’t deliver the goods needed. I am stunned she got an Oscar nom.

Since I am not Ebert: 1.5 stars.

14

The book was one of the best stories I’ve ever read. I was afraid it would not translate well to film.

15

No, we don’t see his face at the time. It is suggested ahead of time in the scene where Mr. Chocolate Factory owner meets Briony’s young cousin and seems slightly too interested in her; when Briony sees the people having sex in the grass the face is not shown; later on, in a flashback, Briony remembers the scene and at that point the face of Mr. Chocolate Factory owner is shown (but is this her wanting that to be true, or is it an accurate memory?)
In the movie, I think that we are supposed to imagine that the “rape” witnessed by Briony outside in the park was consensual.
In the movie, we see:
a) Mr. Chocolate Factory owner and Briony’s cousin meet in one room of the house. Mr. Chocolate Factory owner offers Briony’s cousin some chocolate (we all know what that means!)
b) Mr. Chocolate Factory owner and Briony’s cousin show up at dinner time. Briony’s cousin says “I had to put the twins (her brothers) in timeout because they were mean to me - look at the bruises on my arms!” Mr. Chocolate Factory owner coughs and says “yes, those two kids are brats.” Implication - the bruises comes from Mr. Chocolate Factory owner being a little too vigorous in his flirting.
c) Briony’s cousin has sex in the park, Briony finds her, unknown assailant runs away.

If Briony’s cousin was not willing to have sex with Mr. Chocolate Factory owner, she would have said something after the incident in b).

I am going to go against the grain here and say I loved the movie, but then I’m a sucker for British period pieces. The love between Robbie and Cecilia does not have a lot of screen time but then one kind of expects that in British stories because English gentlefolk are not supposed to be very demonstrative.

I agree that Saoirse Ronan gave by far the best performance in the movie.

As I said in the previous Atonement thread I did walk away with the impression that Briony never did any real atoning for her crime so the title was a misnomer. But I was willing to forgive that because the majority of the film was well done. The scene of the retreat at Dunkirk might have seemed like the filmmaker was trying too hard to use the cliches showing the absurdity of war (wounded soldiers dying on the beach next to a Ferris wheel) but it worked for me.

16

Yeah, he likes her but it doesn’t necessarily mean she likes him.

Doubtful. First of all, she’s a stranger in a new house…who exactly would she go to? Besides, even if she did enjoy the vigorous “flirting” (I actually didn’t even pick up on it being the twins), it doesn’t mean she was willing to have sex. By that rationale, you can’t be raped by anyone you’ve already had sexual relations with in the past.

Besides, she even said to Briony that she was assaulted, and she looked very traumatized. And she herself didn’t even know who had assaulted her–how could she have consented to that?

17

I thought that she was Briony’s cousin. So not really a stranger.

I thought she was traumatized because she was caught in the act, and she only talks about being attacked after Briony assumes that this is what happened - the cousin uses that as an excuse because nice girls don’t do that and she doesn’t want to tarnish her reputation. The cousin is not the one who mentions Robbie, Briony leads her in that direction.
I assumed it was consensual all along though of course I could be mistaken.
Is it explained differently in the book?

18

I only read the first part of the book–which does include the sex–but a long time ago. I thought it was definitely assault when I read it.

I think she was Briony’s cousin or family friend, but I don’t think Briony had ever met her. At any rate, this was definitely a time when things like that weren’t really discussed. I can definitely see a sixteen year old girl (even today) feeling freaked out and not doing anything about it out of fear/uncertainty.

The girl’s (okay, I finally had to go look up the name–she’s called Lola) really looked like something more than consensual sex had happened. I mean, she looked completely traumitized. It was really hard for me to watch that and think that was normal consensual sex. I dunno, others can weigh in, but to me, it completely looked like assault.

19

So why did Lola go ahead and marry Mr. Chocalate Factory? Of course this makes it harder for Briony to backtrack and say it was him and not Robbie that committed the crime. And it makes Lola rich. Is that the explanation?

20

I don’t know. But Lola did say she didn’t see who attacked her, so maybe she didn’t know.