ATONEMENT [2007] review

January 13, 2008 · Print This Article

It would be hard for me to state the genre that ATONEMENT falls into. At first you think it will be a period piece showing the subtleties of early 20th century rich English society focusing on a single family. Then it seems it will become a romance. Before that you might have thought for a second, due to some jump editing and flashbacks, that it is a kind of fantasy. And then all of a sudden at about the halfway point it turns into a war movie. How it ends, I can’t say.

No doubt this movie is a patchwork of genres and storytelling methods. There are the aforementioned jump cuts and flashbacks, one very long take that made me feel a little dizzy, some more fantasy and then the ending, which I can’t say. Not to mention a couple scenes of intense battle wound gore that I had to turn my eyes from.

…The event that sets all this in motion seems to me very trivial and something that could have easily been clarified. So I had a hard time buying the plot because of this. Once I got over that and movie changed gears into a war movie, I became more attached to the characters and hoping for them to meet the fates they wanted to. How we learn how each characters’ fate turns out was a bit gimmicky to me, and a bit abrupt, but still I felt some emotion despite the beginnings of the love story not really being developed enough, but are they ever?

…I don’t know how well this patchwork of genres and styles in ATONEMENT stands with me. I could recommend it on the basis of just seeing what genre you think the movie ends up being, if any one in particular, and if the style gimmicks work for you. For me, I’d say everything turned out 50/50.

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