Atoned for our sins ... and theirs

By the time Atonement’s two characters are running on the beach, preoccupied with each others’ touch in the foamy water below the Cliffs of Dover, you will be filled with regret and deep longing, a kind that will fill your soul with unquenchable sadness.

And if you’re like me, you will think of those you love and ponder your encounters with them as dreams, white wisps of memory that are scattered by the most delicate of breezes. Not that any part of Atonement is a dream — no spoilers here — but it frames love inside a frail construction, so frail that the slightest disruption will cause an abrupt conclusion and endless heartache.

Atonement, directed by Pride & Prejudice’s Joe Wright and based on Ian McEwan’s bestseller, is quite simply one of the best films of this year. It is also one of the saddest.

The whole movie takes place over about 60 years (we follow one character into old age), but the vast majority of it takes place within a four year period beginning just before Hitler invades his neighbors in Europe. We begin by swooping down on a typewriter and a string of letters churning from it. The typewriter is a motif that appears frequently — once to show us a very dirty word and many more times through the soundtrack, which sounds like an orchestra of clicking keys. The fingers orchestrating these hammering letters belong to 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), kid sister to Cecilia (Keira Knightley), a beautiful socialite who somehow transcends bratiness with elegance.

Despite an apparent vast difference in social class, Cecelia falls in love with her housekeeper’s son, Robbie (James McAvoy), and before they can openly profess their love at a summer party, Briony orchestrates a lie, or maybe just a misunderstanding, that alters everyone’s lives in ways that are first unfortunate and later hopelessly tragic.

Knightley and McAvoy share scenes so tender and honest that we believe their love not because of the scenes they’re placed in, but because each is so carefully tuned to the characters that their actions seem genuine. They share a scene at a fountain (told from two perspectives) that exhibits the spontaneity and goofiness of new romances. When they kiss it’s like worlds colliding. When they are separated it hurts us more than it does them.

And what a fascinating and curious performance Ronan gives as the little girl: her tall lanky presence, those piercing eyes and astonished looks, her manipulated confession … all of it is remarkable acting. Even the way she walks around her house — straight lines, right angles, usually stomping — seems to be a skill in itself. Her performance is strengthened by Romola Garai, who plays Briony as a nurse at 17 years old.

Also a nurse is Cecilia (still Knightley), although four years later she and Briony still aren’t talking after the dinner party that changed their lives. Robbie, we learn, was sent to jail and then later paroled under the condition that he enlist to fight the Nazis. After a brief meeting with Cecilia to re-establish their love, Robbie ships out and eventually finds himself in the mass evacuation of Dunkirk, in which 300,000 French and British soldiers were evacuated from France as German troops marched onto them.

Atonement offers a view of the evacuation through a nearly-five-minute unbroken shot that features what must be about 5,000 extras, carnival rides, a beached ship, horse executions, dialogue, a choir, wide shots, close-ups, and handheld and crane shots. This single shot is one of the greatest ever filmed, right up there with those long tracking shots from Goodfellas and Touch of Evil. Atonement is no one-trick pony either: the entire film is photographed with exquisite detail and many of the shots could be paused to be made into postcards (one actually is).

As great as the photography is, though, Atonement is made masterful through its delicate story. Cecilia and Robbie are one of the great romances of the cinema. That a 13-year-old gets between them and causes such irreparable harm is a tragedy, and it is made all the more tragic by what Briony does to them further, and then to us as an audience.

Atonement reminds me a great deal of The English Patient, which won the best picture Oscar in 1996. Both films were originally novels, both utilize flashbacks and reference an anonymous text within the story, both take place during the outbreak of World War II, and both are about separated lovers torn apart by unfortunate circumstances caused by a third party. Amid the similarities, though, they are still very different movies. I would even argue that they are companion pieces — they require each other — if only because they show how everlasting love is by showing how delicate it can be when it’s true. English Patient’s characters had the luxury of living large portions of their lives; Atonement’s characters are still so young and yet burdened by situations that are beyond their years.

Hollywood buzz is already calling for Oscar nominations for Knightley, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, director Wright and Christopher Hampton’s screenplay interpretation of the McEwan novel. Oh, and best picture. Give’em the nominations. They deserve them. Every one.