Every so often a beautiful little film comes along that seems to revel in itself. The best of these little things usually come in love story form. It makes it a bit easier for the audience to feel engaged in the tone poetry of it as well. The best bits of the celluloid tone poem THE NEW WORLD revolved around Pocahontas and John Smith dancing around one another (the rest of the film was an honest bore). ATONEMENT is about regret, and the sneaky little thing about regret is that it's basically as self-involving as the trite bit of shittery that got the regret started. It's those actions you can't take back that throw you to the wolves.
Little Briony Tallis (Saorise Ronan) jealously allows her imagination to run wild and so help her frame her crush Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) for a crime he didn't commit. He, for reasons that can only be literary, is in love with the girl's older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley). And just when things are getting really interesting, he's sent to prison, and the rest of the film seems at a loss for what to do with everyone. Robbie ends up joining the army and fighting the war (well, stalking dreary battlefields mostly). There's a touching scene where he bumps into his Cecilia (who's become a nurse) and they exchange furtive glances and handholds at a restaurant before going their separate ways. The end of the film ruins this moment if you think about it, so I won't bring up anything else beyond that touching scene.
Except perhaps one little gem of a tracking shot that has our hero roaming around Dunkirk near sundown, the British army making the best of things in all the possible ways an army can when nothing appears to be going on. Its tonal poetry at its best, and the entire thing moves along in a dream. Everything beyond the great bringer of regret might as well be a dream. It has that same elusiveness, that same dour gloominess about it, like an old woman sitting in a rocking chair staring at a sunset and wishing it were years earlier.
8.08/10
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