I had dismissed seeing Atonement in the theaters due to the advertising that made it look like nothing more than your typical, period, social boundaries doom true love snoozefest. But after seeing the director Joe Wright’s most recent collaboration with actress Saoirse Ronan Hanna, which was stylish and well worth watching, I decided to give it a chance. It starts off as a tense, interesting look at how perspective can color meaning in such extreme ways that perhaps no narrator, no witness is remotely reliable. That’s some heady ground. And it was presented in a unique, powerfully crafted manner. Most of the first act is shots of people watching things, but man are they pretty shots of people watching things. Mostly this movie is concerned with being beautiful. We do get some good performances, Ronan’s was enough to launch her career, and between this and X-Men: First Class James McAvoy has entrenched himself firmly on my dudes to watch list. But by the time the movie gets around to its third act it actually does become a pretty lame and melodramatic period piece. And by the time we get to the finale, with an elderly version of the Ronan character looking back on the early events of the film, it turns into borderline Titanic level emotionally manipulative shlock. A shame for a film that started off looking so promising. Still, probably worth a watch some lazy afternoon. If not for Wright’s artistic flourishes with the camera and sound design, then at least to play the count the bones game when Keira Knightley wears backless dresses.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Short Round: Atonement (2007) ***/*****
I had dismissed seeing Atonement in the theaters due to the advertising that made it look like nothing more than your typical, period, social boundaries doom true love snoozefest. But after seeing the director Joe Wright’s most recent collaboration with actress Saoirse Ronan Hanna, which was stylish and well worth watching, I decided to give it a chance. It starts off as a tense, interesting look at how perspective can color meaning in such extreme ways that perhaps no narrator, no witness is remotely reliable. That’s some heady ground. And it was presented in a unique, powerfully crafted manner. Most of the first act is shots of people watching things, but man are they pretty shots of people watching things. Mostly this movie is concerned with being beautiful. We do get some good performances, Ronan’s was enough to launch her career, and between this and X-Men: First Class James McAvoy has entrenched himself firmly on my dudes to watch list. But by the time the movie gets around to its third act it actually does become a pretty lame and melodramatic period piece. And by the time we get to the finale, with an elderly version of the Ronan character looking back on the early events of the film, it turns into borderline Titanic level emotionally manipulative shlock. A shame for a film that started off looking so promising. Still, probably worth a watch some lazy afternoon. If not for Wright’s artistic flourishes with the camera and sound design, then at least to play the count the bones game when Keira Knightley wears backless dresses.
