I wasn’t a huge fan of Joe Wright’s PRIDE & PREDJUDICE. I didn’t hate it... I just didn’t see anything in the telling that distinguished it from prior versions or that made it seem essential... worth telling again. Maybe I’ll feel differently about this adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, which is getting fantastic reviews out of Toronto right now. Does this spy agree?
After another summer in which Hollywood has inflicted further crimes against cinema with its weapons of mass commercialism, it is with great relief that the new season is upon us. And just as inevitable as the trees shedding their leaves, film gets serious again.
First up in what I hope promises to be a great few months of new releases is Atonement, director Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed novel.
Beginning on a sweltering summer’s day in 1935, young Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) witnesses her older sister Cecelia (Keira Knightley) strip off and jump into a fountain in front of Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), a young man who works on their family’s vast grounds during the summer. Confused as to the meaning of what she has observed, this innocuous event proves to be a tragic turning point in the lives of all three people.
A terrible crime and an equally terrible accusation send these characters spiralling toward very different roles in the impending war. In 1940, Robbie finds himself stranded in France trying to get back to the coast and the mass evacuation at Dunkirk. Cecelia runs away to London and becomes a nurse. Briony (now played by Ramola Garai) follows her later, foregoing a place at Cambridge to also train as a nurse, though in her case as a means of seeking redemption for an act she will always regret.
This is Joe Wright’s second film, following his fresh take on Pride & Prejudice two years ago in which he coaxed the best performance to date from Knightley. She’s solid again here, effortlessly capturing the privilege and old-style glamour of the period’s aristocracy, but the stand-out turns belong to McAvoy, who consolidates his status as one of Britain’s brightest actors, and the young Ronan, who manages to convey both the fertile imagination and self-righteous indignation of the precociously creative Briony.
Production values are uniformly excellent, with Seamus McGarvey’s beautiful cinematography and Dario Marianelli’s sweeping score particularly noteworthy contributions to a largely satisfying film that will undoubtedly be anticipated and debated by the many fans of the novel.
McEwan is a great writer and, for me, Atonement is his masterpiece. His celebrated prose lingers on the minutiae of every imaginable detail, conveying a depth of meaning that elevates the narrative above the mere intrigue of plot to touch the sublime. The plot is, in fact, often secondary, the focus remaining squarely on the psychological and emotional arc of his characters. However, it is this, perhaps McEwan’s greatest strength, which is ultimately the film’s biggest weakness. As an adaptation, Christopher Hampton’s screenplay is certainly faithful, but this serves to highlight just how little plot there actually is. With so much of the novel’s dramatic weight anchored by interior monologue, the film struggles to find either the same level of complexity or sense of personal journey the reader experiences vicariously through the three central figures.
This is, of course, the most challenging and often frustrating dilemma faced by any adaptation of the written word; how to retain what makes the source material so special whilst still establishing an artistic identity of its own? It perhaps makes sense then that the film’s highpoint should be a truly remarkable sequence in which words play no part. As Robbie reaches the beach at Dunkirk, the camera follows his path, surveying the scale of the retreat in a virtuoso 4-minute single tracking shot. The ambition of the scene is staggeringly impressive, taking in the full chaos of the shattered British forces as they wait for the ships that will take them back home. It is an achievement of supreme logistical coordination and artful execution. The gliding camera’s dispassionate eye only seems to amplify the resonance of the devastation. For those that celebrate the phoney spectacle of CGI superheroes and warring giant robots, here is an opportunity to observe what epic cinema really means.
As the camera comes to rest on McAvoy’s shocked and weary face, his dead stare conveys a level of introspection in these moments that the rest of the film is unable to consistently attain. The novel switches between the perspective of the three characters, and while I commend the filmmakers for resisting what must have been a very tempting recourse to extensive voiceover, without the stream of consciousness insight so integral to McEwan’s style, it doesn’t quite feel that the characters are pushed to the brink in the same way they are in the book, which particularly detracts from the development of Briony’s contrition. As a result, the film feels slightly less than it should.
Nevertheless, this is still a strong piece of work and confirms Wright as one of Britain’s most promising young directors. Treating its difficult subject matter with due reverence and maturity, if it does fall short along the way, it is a failure that still offers ample and very welcome rewards in the pursuit of far loftier ambitions than your average, homogenized production.
Dickie Greenleaf
