4TheRcrd Mag.

Very much like the book, “Atonement” the movie, offers a complex, often time-shifting, tragico-romantic-love story, where the truth behind its tragedy is revealed in the end of a lush, visually stunning, cinematic triumph. This capsule-review will not draw parallels between the book however, due to brevity. The spirit of this review will not give the crucial ending away either, because I desperately want you to enjoy this film for yourself. So I will speak without implying the ending, I will speak of sadness and the beauty with which the sadness of this story pressured me to tears. I will do so in acknowledging also that I greatly value the female roles in this film, due to their agency, predominance, strength of character, as they remained active subjects in the film — giving it a pivotal semi-feminist note that I appreciated very much.

It is not often that a film inspires one to repent, rethink or, more appropriately, “atone” for something one has done — however (in-)significant it may have been. And because it speaks to our lived experiences, and the impacts we have on others in our lives, that it re-affirms so many questions in the ‘human condition’. “Atonement” is an exploration of the comedy of errors that conspire to sacrifice love, and personal transformation, for the selfish desire to punish another for loving someone else, as unconscious as that desire may have been. Exploring the significance of a young girl’s childhood-crush and its effects of envy on two young lovers, “Atonement” offers a morally-laden expose of the self-discovery of a young woman who, as she says in the film, “has never loved.” It is a double-question: (1) are two lovers who have loved but will never live out their love together more profoundly crushed than a (2) young woman who has never lived that (or any) love at all?

Ok, so my short “capsule review” ends here… For more personal ramblings on this one, click below…

This film is a “stupendous” weave of fantasy and fiction, in a narrative that we come to find out exists only in the deep recesses of the author’s mind, and the imagery of the film. This film is (as are so many films) a meta-narratological tale, in that it offers a visual alternate-reality to an unacceptable tragic ending that we witness ever too late to accept — a marvelous cinematic trick. It offers this continual tragedy not only through its events but because we learn that the events exist within a narrative always-already imbued by the mind of the writer who, from scene one of the film, frames the entire tale from her own eyes, from the eyes who never got a chance to love.

I give this film a firm 10 of 10, because it had the strength to move so many in its audience, and because it coherently captured the dilemmas and nuances behind these feelings for an experience that shall last well beyond the time spent in the movie-theater. It had the effect of leaving the audience with a signature of “atonement”. This review has been written without too many adjectives, or embellishments, when you see the movie you will understand my reasons why. A must see.

PHOTO CREDIT: Viff Media Library, by Permission.