Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

This holiday season's period film Oscar bait is ATONEMENT, based on Ian McEwan's novel, and it's unlike any spanning-the-ages type of film I've seen in a very long time. Often showing the same scene from different perspectives, and often utterly shifting the meaning of the selected events in the process, the film begins its tale in 1935 Britain. The 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan) has a schoolgirl crush on the older Robbie (James McAvoy), who is the well-educated son of Briony's family's housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn). It's clear early on that Briony's obsession with Robbie is unhealthy, as is evidenced when she tosses herself into deep water right in front of him after he promises to rescue her if she ever was in danger of drowning. From a distance, Briony witnesses what she believes to be a passionate exchange between Robbie and her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley), when in fact the moment is more of an argument. But it's enough to upset the young, would-be writer and send her down a path toward ruining what she perceives to be a love affair between the two grown-ups.

After intercepting a rather explicit letter Robbie accidentally sends to Cecilia (who have since acknowledged their passion for each other), Briony accuses Robbie of a truly awful crime, claiming herself as the incident's only witness. Robbie is taken away by the police. Jumping ahead to the ending months of World War II, we find Robbie was given the option of prison or the military. He and a couple fellow soldiers find themselves behind enemy lines in the north of France, and they sneak their way to the sea in hopes of somehow making it back to Britain. In the film's single most impressive moment, the three men stumble upon the aftermath of the Invasion of Normandy. If ATONEMENT is remembered for anything, it will be for a minutes-long tracking shot following Robbie's team through the death and destruction on that beach; it's an awe-inspiring sequence that I almost want to watch over and over just to notice as much of what's going on in the background as I can.

Meanwhile, a now 18-year-old Briony (Romola Garai), who apparently is ever-so-sorry for her actions as a youth, is a war-time nurse, who is attempting to undo the damage she has done. Her sister won't meet or even speak with her, and a great deal of the film shows her often gruesome work as a combat medical professional, as she writes an account of the events in which everyone's lives were changed. The last moments of the film, featuring an elderly Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) doing an interview about her book detailing these events, may be too far fetched for some viewers to handle. Director Joe Wright (who helmed Knightley's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE) and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (DANGEROUS LIAISONS) have perhaps overplayed their hand with the film's message about Briony's final act of contrition for the misdeeds she did these doomed lovers. Frankly, the ending (whether this is how the novel ends, I don't know) feels like a bit of a cop out and an example of too little, far too late.

Still, everything leading up to the final disappointing 10 minutes is spectacular. Knightley is simply simmering, and this may be the first time I "get" what all the fuss is about McAvoy, an actor who has failed to really impress me to this point, even with his work in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND and BECOMING JANE. He absolutely carries his own in both the love story and the war scenes, and with one performance I finally buy him as both a romantic lead and a shell-shocked, wartime hero. Atonement is a flawed work, but still well worth seeing. The film's R rating is something of a joke, since the rating is given primarily for the letter Robbie writes Cecelia and a little clothed humping against a bookshelf (see, even the sex is literary). The film is an impressive and beautifully shot movie that is better, perhaps, than the material warrants thanks to some winning performances.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com