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Tragic love story done
in sumptuous style
of TheColumnists.com
All the way through "Atonement," I kept thinking it was like an especially sexy, big budget episode of PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre," which isn't exactly a putdown of this fine movie.
Set in 1935 among the wealthy upper classes of post-depression England, "Atonement" is the love story of a beautiful young woman (Keira Knightley) and an enthralled young man (James McAvoy) and how it tragically falls apart when the girl's 13-year-old sister (Saoirse Ronan), an imaginative would-be writer with a childish crush on the young man, tells a lie, accusing him of a crime he didn't commit.
The young man is disgraced and loses everything because of the girl's lie and the unwillingness of the real culprit to come forward and admit his guilt. The story grows even more tragic as World War II erupts and brings chaos to England and all the characters we first meet before the war.
This production is so richly mounted, so brilliantly acted and beautifully photographed that the vagaries of the story mean little and you're ultimately entranced by everything you see. Knightley grows more valuable with each new performance and it's now quite clear that she's as immensely talented as she is ravishingly beautiful, which says a lot for her talent. She will be an important presence in movies for years to come.
There's a lesson for all of us in this film--that the little lies we tell can have awesome consequences and even, as in this story, ruin the lives of many people forever. "Atonement" is a film to treasure and, because of its setting in the not so distant past, is likely to seem evergreen far longer than many of the excellent contemporary-themed films of the same year.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The illustration is courtesy of Focus Films. This column first posted Feb. 18, 1976.
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