Atonement - out now
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
On a sultry summer day in 1935 an upper-class family prepares for a dinner party at their country mansion. Precocious 13 year old Briony is looking for drama, and writes a playlet to be performed in front of the adults. When the thing falls flat she goes for a walk, and observing her elder sister Cecilia stripping off after a strange argument with Robbie, the housekeeper’s son, Briony’s fevered imagination and sexual naïveté lead her to make a dramatic false accusation which sees Robbie sent to jail. Five years later the drama moves to World War II. Briony, estranged from her sister, embarks on a nursing career in a lifelong struggle to atone for her single terrible lie which destroys the lives of a whole family. Cecilia has also become a nurse, while Robbie is a footsoldier preparing for the Dunkirk evacuation.
In this powerful and sumptuous adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) deserves praise for bringing the novel’s major themes - betrayal, redemption, sexual repression, and the unreliability of narrative - to the big screen. Wright likes to give us extended close-ups which bring the characters’ repressed emotions to the fore – Robbie’s clouded brow disguising the hurt of betrayal and discrimination; Cecilia’s jaunty visage which breaks into a warm smile when she encounters her beloved Robbie.
