Atonement
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, James McAvoy, Kiera Knightley
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/
This review contains minor spoilers.
It has taken me a long time to finally see this movie. It has been on my list since it first started getting Oscar buzz but it is a long slow moving heavy movie and I kept putting it off. I had expected to enjoy it and I did, though not so much for the story or the majority of the characters. There was three things I liked about this movie which made it an overall good film. The cinematography (yes I know I say that about a lot of movies), the score, and the phenomenal acting on the part of Saoirse Ronan. I can easily see how she could be nominated for as many awards as she was, but I can also see how she wouldn’t win in the face of the competition, and the fact that she has many more years of acting ahead of her.
As I mentioned before, the movie is both long and for the most part slow moving and yet I was never really bored. Thanks to the amazing camera work, even the most mundane of scenes was interesting. The extremely long and slow zooms were a favorite of mine, and the amazing Dunkirk scene; a 5+ minute single tracking shot that follows McAvoy during the Dunkirk evacuation of the war. That scene alone completely blew me away, it was an inspired bit of cinematography.
Dario Marianelli, the force behind the score did an amazing job making it feel part of the world. He created a score based on the sounds of a typewriter which created a really cool effect that sounded great. It also flowed well by having it start as Ronan’s character is typing on an actual typewriter.
Ronan herself is an amazing actress and her character was great. Even the older version of herself was well written and played. The two of them taking the majority of my interest-alloted-for-characters. The elder version though looks so much like the actress who plays “Starbuck” in BSG that I kept having to concentrate on her face to make sure it was not her.
The movie tends to jump around in time, even replaying scenes over again from a different characters perspective which took me by surprise but was otherwise not distracting. The plot was not bad though not entirely engaging and if it weren’t for the points I mentioned earlier I probably would not have enjoyed it. However if you don’t mind slow moving character dramas, and especially if you are a fan of great cinematography than I would recommend checking this out.
I loved the actors in this film. It has been great watching James McAvoy come into his own. The story was interesting, but very long and confusing for the first hour. Then I figured it out. I turned to my sister and said, “I see dead people.” “Atonement” is worth seeing, but it falls short when you realize it was promoted falsely, and that certain scenes were not original or inspired at all – there were bad copies of M. Night Shyamalan’s style & technique. See it for free – try not to pay for it.
Previous to this film the only movies I have seen James McAvoy in have been Penelope and the trailer for Wanted so I agree that it was nice seeing him stretch out in a good role.