Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007)

An overblown epic about childhood mistakes morphing into adult regrets, Atonement is nothing but a bore. It has been overpraised for its use of cinematic flourishes, which really did nothing but to confuse a story best kept simple and sincere. The first and second acts that involved the intrigues of an upper-class British family vacationing at the countryside lacked the lazy yet critical elegance of Altman or Davies. (Let's all admit it: we watch these kinds of movies to both marvel at the lives we do not and cannot live and be bitter at our incapacity to live such a life of comfort.) The act was dished out through frenetic cuts and deplorably grandiose camera techniques which showed nothing but the filmmakers' lack of internal sense of pacing or framing. It seems the filmmakers wanted to say something about class, but kind of missed the fact that their pornographic focus on the upper class deny them the right or the ability to be conscious of it. (Robbie was a help's son, but so what? He seems like he has nothing better to do than flirt with the family's pretty girls and dine with them. In short, he's a gentleman in ratty clothes.) This overuse of literary/cinematic high-mindedness reached its peak with the five-minute Dunkirk scene, which was not only detached from the rest of the movie but merely indulged the civilian fantasy of the infantile soldier. Briony's character however suffers the greatest. Her “perspective” involved the most use of dollies, cranes, and jump cuts, but what it crucially left out is Briony herself. When she is a young girl, she remains pitifully immature. When she becomes old, she did not necessarily grow, just become more pitiful. Her sexuality was never explored, only portrayed as curio in the film's display of Corruption. (In fact, the film is so cowardly as to limit adolescent sexuality to rape.) When she grows old, she merely becomes an overblown tween whose only lesson from the past is regret and sorrow. Which is sad, because a mature Briony would have salvaged this dry and humorless movie (and actually raise the idea of “atonement” to “salvation”), and would have given reason for Vanessa Redgrave's appearance.