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Trailer here. (http://universalpublicity.thinkjam.com/video/atonement/trailer/trailer_qt_hi_500x286.mov)
Release Date: December 7th, 2007 (limited)
Starring: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn, Vanessa Redgrave
Directed by: Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice)
Premise: The drama spanning several decades about a fledgling writer, Briony Tallis, who, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
Ooh, that book is on my summer reading list. I didn't even know they were making it into a movie.
I'm looking forward to it!
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Okay, so after reading the book (which I highly recommend), and rewatching the trailer a couple of times and being nearly roused to tears, this is definitely my most anticipated movie of the year.
It's not that the trailer is particularly well cut. It's actually kind of a mess. And the poster is fairly ugly, also. But the images from the film, when paired in mind with the words from the book, were so strong.
I've also re-watched Pride & Prejudice and have come to really respect Joe Wright, and I felt that Keira was very good under his direction. The film seems to be very well cast, and the screenplay adaptation was by Christopher Hampton, a very respectable writer.
In short, I've raised my hopes so high that this movie will have to invent a new meaning to greatness in order to not crush me. A bonus for me is that I'll be in England when this opens in September there, so I won't have to wait until December!
An "Instant Classic" Opens Venice Film Fest
The Venice Film Festival opened Wednesday night with several critics predicting that the opening-night film, Joe Wright's Atonement, will not only capture the festival's Golden Lion award but numerous Oscars as well. Ray Bennett in the Hollywood Reporter describes it as "an instant classic" and predicts it will capture "rapturous audiences and major awards." Writing in the London Daily Telegraph, David Gritten praised the film as "a triumph" and forecast that the film will garner numerous awards, especially for stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy's "impeccable performances" and for Wright's "bravura direction." Gritten concludes: "Truly, here is a British film worth celebrating." Nevertheless, Gritten and other critics question the commercial viability of the movie. Gritten remarked that it "might prove a little too rarefied for large mainstream audiences." Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian wrote, "It is clever, sophisticated: though perhaps multiplex audiences might find it a little too tricksy." Comparing the film to Wright's earlier Pride and Prejudice, Christopher Tookey in the Daily Mail wrote that while that film "was accessible enough to involve a mainstream international audience, I have my doubts about Atonement's ability to do the same." Nevertheless, he remarked, "the film is always gripping." Geoffrey McNab in the Independent calls the movie "a formidable achievement" for director Wright, adding, "The strength of the film lies in its extraordinary visual imagination and in the intensity the young actors bring to their roles." In the Times, James Christopher comments that Knightley's performance gives her "a tilt, at least, at an Oscar nomination." However, he goes on to call the film itself a "grim slog."
New Trailer here. (http://www.focusfeatures.com/viewer.php?f=atonement&c=trailer&ext=mov&w=480&h=360)
That trailer sucked. It tells too much and makes the whole story seem more pedestrian than it really is.
TIFF Interview: Joe Wright Talks To Cinematical About Directing 'Atonement,' Working With Ian McEwan and His Next Period Film
Here at the Toronto Film Festival, I had a chance to sit down with Joe Wright, one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. For the last two years I've been saying good things to everyone I know about his most recent film, a loose and lively adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride & Prejudice, and now I'll be able to change the subject to the joys of his new picture, an adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement. If you're at TIFF like me, don't miss out on an opportunity to catch a screening of Atonement -- it's the best film I've come across at this year's fest, and it's sure to be a tough competitor come Oscar time. During our conversation, Joe and I talked about his unique directing style, which among other things utilizes stream-of-consciousness techniques, and we talked about the challenge of adapting a novel that was shortlisted for every book prize imaginable. Joe and I started by talking for a few about what we've seen so far at the festival -- he recommends Control -- but eventually I hit the button and got us down to business.
RS: Have you seen the Ken Loach movie yet? It's good.
JW: No, I haven't.
RS: It's got a social relevance angle, but it plays like a thriller. Very tight.
JW: Okay, that's exciting -- I love Ken Loach.
RS: One thing I wanted to mention about the movie version of Atonement, and the book, is that I'm not sure I buy Part 3 -- I think we're dealing with an unreliable narrator at that point. Obviously she's giving us certain key facts, but also sliding in a very dramatic Florence Nightingale story. Do you buy Part 3 on its merits?
JW: I do. I do because of the research that we did. I was very fascinated by the role St. Thomas plays. St. Thomas has a very personal role in my own life, and so I was interested in the history of that hospital, the oldest hospital in London. And it's where Florence Nightingale originally formed the first nursing training, etc. And I was very interested in the history of it, and through research and talking to various people about nursing during the war, I discovered that these kids, basically ... these 18 and 19 year-old girls were there and were employed to nurse these dying men. For instance, during the blitz when bombs were falling all throughout, especially areas close to the river -- the German bombers would just use the reflection of the water to guide their aircraft -- they would take everyone, take all the patients they could down to the basement, to the air raid shelters, but then those patients that couldn't be taken down there, one nurse would be left in the ward with bombs falling all around her, to hold the hand of these dying men. I found that incredibly moving, this heroism shown by these kids, basically. It happened, and that was your duty. I find it fairly inconceivable for young people now to understand the sacrifice those girls made.
So as far as Briony is concerned, for a start I don't think she would have had a choice. But I do think she showed heroism. I think Briony is incredibly strong in some ways. It always upsets me when people say they hate Briony. Which people do -- some women, especially -- do hate Briony by the end of the movie. I feel very close to Briony and I feel like she's the character I'm probably closest to.
RS: It would be such a completely different story if she were 17, instead of 13.
JW: Absolutely.
RS: And by casting Vanessa Redgrave in that pivotal third incarnation of her, it says to me that you did want absolute credibility there.
JW: Yes, absolutely. I think at that stage in her life she has to be utterly true and honest and right.
RS: The book, at some point, explicitly references Woolf's notion of a "crystalline present" and that was striking to me because I've picked up that thread in your work, perhaps most noticeably in the two very similar openings of your two films. Do you think a lot about formalizing those ideas in your work?
JW: I do. Not necessarily in the context of Virginia Woolf or literary ideas, but my medium is film and I explore things and ideas with the tools that I have and am interested in, as its put, the crystalline present. I'm interested in consciousness, basically. Trying to capture consciousness on film. And I think film is probably, to me, one of the best mediums for doing that. And also, I was trying to find cinematic equivalents to McEwan's prose, to the book. These lyrical passages are reflected in the kind of long, steadicam shots, and then these very staccato, elliptical cuts. I tried to capture those passages where he becomes more.
RS: At one point, speaking through Briony, he makes the pronouncement that character and story are dead and the journey of the mind is the way forward, but I see a contradiction there, because he's also very concerned about telling a great story, as are you in your works. You have to balance.
JW: Absolutely. He's ... I think McEwan is an extraordinary writer and certainly one of the most important, if not the most important British novelist. But his books do want to be read. They're not ... that's one of the things that's so good about him. He does create great stories -- you're interested in turning the page. They're not just musings, contemplations, meditations on consciousness. They're good plots. So he's got kind of a contradiction, I completely agree with you.
RS: In the same way he 'wants to be read,' your shot compositions are very deliberate – they 'want to be seen.' Think of all five Bennett sisters standing up at once in Pride & Prejudice, or that three shot on the boat in Atonement, with Keira posed in just such a way. Obviously you put much thought into those shots, but to what end? Is there something you're expressing through form?
JW: Yes, absolutely. To me, every decision has an impact on the reader. [laughs] I'm getting a little mixed up this morning. On the viewer's understanding of the story you're telling. So, just in the way that McEwan would consider how he constructs a sentence, I consider how I construct a shot. That's what I've got to play with. So I am very ... I try to be aware of what I'm doing. I try to be in the crystalline present, myself. Having said that, I often don't have an intellectual reason for choices. Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.
RS: By the way, everyone's been talking about why you chose Anthony Minghella for that small part in the end, and what you're trying to say with that.
JW: Oh, I just couldn't work out who the f*ck to cast in that role!
RS: It's a little curious. I mean, do you consider him a contemporary influence?
JW: I consider him a friend. We've known each other a little while, and when I was coming close to feeling like the script was ready, I showed it to Anthony and Anthony asked me lots of awkward questions, some of which I could answer and some of which I couldn't. So he was kind of an influence in that respect, but that really had nothing to do with casting him as the interviewer. I just literally couldn't think of who to put in that role and I didn't want to get some kind of day-playing actor who would be nervous around Vanessa, basically. And at the same time, I didn't want to get Melvin Bragg or some TV personality who might take up too much space. It was all about Vanessa, basically. It was all about finding someone who wouldn't be inhibited by Vanessa and that she'd feel comfortable with. I see the job of directing as being one of creating the right atmosphere, creating an environment where people can realize their full potential. So, it was a matter of creating the right atmosphere for Vanessa.
RS: Is that why you tend to bring back actors you've worked with – because that hard work is done, on some level?
JW: Yeah, to some extent that's true, and also I just like working with people I know, you know? It's true of everyone behind the camera -- most of my crew are people I've worked with at least once, and more often many, many times since my early TV work. And the acting department is another department, as far as I'm concerned. Obviously one of the most important departments, but it's just the same. It's our little family, and we all grow to love each other, and then you want to spend more time with them.
RS: We talked about the back and forth with Minghella, but what about McEwan? Did you have that with him?
JW: Very much so, yeah.
RS: How long did that go on?
JW: All the way through. I had to get his agreement to direct the film, so I met him, very nervously one lunch time when Tim Bevan proposed me as director and we had a ... I was terrified. I'm always very inhibited by extremely clever men. I find them terrifying, but we very quickly slipped into ... I was there to learn from him, basically. One of the most exciting things about my job is that I get to meet these extraordinary people and maybe get to learn a thing or two. So, I was there to learn from him and once he understood that and once he also understood that I was interested in ... the challenge I was setting myself was to make a totally faithful adaptation of the book. I found that an exciting challenge ... and he kind of warmed up and we got on very well. Every draft of the screenplay I would send him and he'd send notes or we'd have a conversation and I'd go round to his house and sit and talk to him. He was extraordinary.
RS: Was the faithfulness necessary to get his approval?
JW: No.
RS: I mean, you took liberties with Pride & Prejudice.
JW: Pride & Prejudice was actually, I think, a more difficult adaptation, just because there's so much plot. More has to be cut. I loved the book. I thought the book, to understate it, 'worked.' So I didn't see why one should try and fix it. So my challenge, really, was to see if it could work. I had this idea that you could actually make a totally faithful adaptation of that book, and everyone thought that was kind of crazy. There's a kind of received wisdom that writers, adapters always say, which is 'at some point you have to throw the book away.'
RS: Right.
JW: And I'd always say, 'Oh, yes of course.' I'd take that received wisdom and say 'Yes, of course, you have to throw the book away, yes, yes, yes, of course.' I even found myself repeating it occasionally. Then, on this, I suddenly questioned that. I thought, well, why do you have to do that? The book is almost perfect, so why would I want to throw it away?
RS: Your next project, The Soloist, is quite a departure. Are you nervous about leaving Englishness behind for a while?
JW: I am, yes. But it's the story of two outsiders and so I kind of hope that I can bring an outsider's point of view to it. I always feel pretty schizophrenic when I'm walking through Los Angeles. And it's a film about a schizophrenic, so I thought that was apt. But also, it's a period film. The period happens to be 2005, but I'm treating it as a period film and I'm bringing ... maybe even a few of the British cast. So, it's a big challenge for me, this next one.
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movie better atone for that stupid tagline.
This Winter, Someone's Got Some Atoning To Do
Joe Wright on Directing Atonement
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon
Two years ago, director Joe Wright garnered a bit of attention for his 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, but that now seems fairly miniscule to the scrutiny that's been put on his every move since it was announced that he would direct Christopher (Dangerous Liaisons) Hampton's adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement, a gripping hard-to-label story about a mistake in judgment made by a young girl named Briony Talis that stays with her for her entire life. It stars James McAvoy and Keira Knightley as young lovers who are split apart by Briony's decision while they're all very young, sending McAvoy's character Robbie to the French front during WWII, though it takes a different approach to the normal war-time romantic drama we've seen before.
Atonement is a far more challenging film in terms of scope, tone and pacing than Pride & Prejudice, but Wright has proven that his first film was no fluke as he's imposed a visionary direction to McEwan's novel to create a riveting film notable for the three performances that make up the three stages in Briony Talis' life, played by newcomer Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and acting legend Vanessa Redgrave.
ComingSoon.net had two chances to speak with Wright, both times outside the U.S., the first time we sat down with him for ten minutes at the Toronto Film Festival, where the film had its North American premiere, and then once again in London at the film's official junket. Both times we didn't have nearly as much time as necessary to really get into the head of this exciting filmmaker, but we did the best we could.
ComingSoon.net: So you're back working with most of the same team, back with Keira, but making a completely different movie.
Joe Wright: I really like the thing of having a company of actors and I like the company atmosphere, so it's important for me to work with the same people. It makes me feel safe, and we kind of understand each other.
CS: I assume you had a bigger budget this time around.
Wright: Not really. Well, about $4 million more.
CS: That's still a lot, but it looks like $50 million more.
Wright: Right, no, no, no, it's a budget of $30 million.
CS: That's pretty amazing, especially when you consider things like the tracking shot on the beach...
Wright: Yeah, I mean a lot of the budget went on that, but it was only one day we had to shoot it, and that's in a way why I did that tracking shot, is 'cause I had one day to film that whole scene and thought that maybe the best way to do that was to concentrate on the rehearsals all day and then use the last 3 hours of the day to shoot. It was partly financial constraints that led to us shooting it in that way.
CS: How long did it take to set everything up though?
Wright: 12 hours... well, the art department had been there for six weeks beforehand, so they'd been getting it all set for six weeks and it was a fairly big job.
CS: It looked it. I remember talking to Alfonso Cuaron, who told me that it took them ten days just to set everything up for that big finale in "Children of Men" and then one whole day of filming once they had it worked out.
Wright: We didn't have that luxury.
CS: Can you talk about how that idea came about?
Wright: It started off as a bit of a joke really. I had a problem which was that I only had one day with all of those extras, and we couldn't afford any more, and the sequence was originally written as a montage and I wasn't sure how I was going to cover that amount of shots in a single day and have continuity of light and "magic light" and all that kind of stuff, so one day in discussion with Seamus (the cinematographer), I sort of jokingly said, "Why don't we do it as a single Steadicam shot" and everyone laughed. "Ha ha ha, what a wag!" and then I went home that night and started thinking about it, and asking myself the question quite seriously. I reread the passage from the book and it's a really lyrical passage, so it seemed like the right way to do it, so the next day I went in and told them and they stopped laughing. It was something that we prepared very closely for but the heroes of that day were the extras who really gave their heart and soul to the dignity of the moment and also the camera team and the Steadicam operator who just did an extraordinary job. But it was an amazing thing to have 1,300 people focus on one five-minute section.
CS: Was this movie something you already had in the works as you were finishing up "Pride & Prejudice"?
Wright: I was finishing "Pride & Prejudice" and "Pride" was the first story I ever told with a happy ending. I was kind of fascinated with happy endings and what they were for, what their purpose was, so while I was finishing "Pride," Tim Bevin came to me and said, "We've got this project 'Atonement.' Have you read the novel?" And I hadn't, so I read it quite quickly and immediately said, "This is what I want to do next." It spoke to a lot of the issues I'd been thinking about in terms of storytelling and happy endings. There was a script that Christopher Hampton had written with the previous director, Richard Eyre, and I read that script and didn't feel that it was in line with the film I wanted to make, and felt like I needed to get some ownership of the material, in a way, creatively. So we started again, and what I was interested in doing was a very faithful adaptation to the book. We literally kept the book on one side and the script on the other and we slowly worked through it, and that's how we came up with it.
CS: I haven't read the book yet, but is the structure similar with the non-linear telling of stories from different viewpoints, such as the fountain scene?
Wright: The structure is practically exactly the same. That's some of the stuff that I was most fascinated by, and I can imagine that was the stuff that had been pulled into the more linear structure by the previous director.
CS: I think it's a movie that you have to see more than once to really appreciate.
Wright: I hope so.
CS: One of the things I really liked was how some of the visual parallels you drew between Briony falling into the water and the fountain scene. Was a lot of that referred to in the book with literary parallels?
Wright: Some of them. Some of them not. The water motif of Cecelia wasn't in the book and that was something I kind of developed intuitively really. I didn't intellectually think "Oh, I want to do a water motif with Cecelia," it just kind of developed. It's a funny thing when you're designing a film. You have certain images in place and then it starts to, almost like painting, you're balancing the composition if you like.
CS: When people heard that Keira was making another movie with you, we automatically assume she's going to be the lead, but it's really more about Robbie and Briony even.
Wright: I think certainly that Briony is the lead character, although actually, it's played by three different actors, but Robbie/James has the most screen time, and so maybe he's the front filling.
CS: The casting of the three actresses as Briony is something that leaves a lasting impression, because it's more than just the hair style that makes them seem like the same character. Each of them show the same characteristics as the character. Did you film one of them first and then have the other two watch and modify their performance to that?
Wright: Yeah, I did. Most importantly, I cast Saoirse Roman first, before the adults, and normally—I think I'm right in saying this—when you're casting a character who's seen also as a child and an adult, you cast the adult first and then try to find a child that looks like the adult and also can act. I knew that would be a tall order, because they're not that many kids that can act. So I cast Saoirse first, and then based my cast on her, although I always kind of had Vanessa in mind. I always hoped that Vanessa would work, and then we did rehearsals with the three of them where they all played silly games of copying each other's movements and walking the same way. All three of them together, and it was really interesting studying the ideas of development of personality and expression. It was a very strange three days with those three, and then I did shoot all of Saoirse's stuff first and then exactly as you suggest, I showed both Romola and Vanessa what Briony... and I only showed them Briony's point of view of any scene, so they never saw the fountain scene from Robbie and Cecelia's point of view and they never saw the library scene from their point of view. They only saw stuff that Briony would have seen.
CS: Vanessa is one of those actresses who you could put in a movie and do a monologue and suddenly, even a great movie is elevated that much more.
Wright: Absolutely, I totally agree. You could have her read the phone book and she'd make it fascinating.
CS: You always had her in mind for the part?
Wright: Yeah, I'm just a huge fan of hers, always have been. I worship the water she walks on, and so I hope that I'd be able to work with her. I often work with people that I would want to have conversations with. It's an excuse for me to spend time with people, and she's someone I wanted to spend time with.
CS: Had you seen some of James' other work before casting him as Robbie?
Wright: I first saw James like seven years ago, in the theatre in London, which was actually the first job he ever did when he came to London, directed by a friend of mine, and thought he was stunning then. I've always been very much aware of what he was doing, and thought he was an extraordinary talent.
CS: It's amazing that he could still play fairly young characters...
Wright: He is young!
CS: Even so, when he first shows up on screen, I was surprised, because I've seen him play teenagers and high school students, and though he's young, he can also play the world-weary person and you don't see too many young actors being able to do that.
Wright: I always liked the description in Ian McEwan's novel of Robbie having "eyes of optimism" and I felt that James has eyes of optimism.
CS: I also love the score on this movie and how a lot of sound effects were incorporated into the music. Was that something you wanted to do for a specific reason? Can you talk about that?
Wright: Yeah, the typewriter is an idea that I came up with during the development of the script and wanted this sense of an omnipresent author of the story you're watching, and so, that typewriter kind of developed at that stage. Dario (Marianelli, the composer) took it on and took it to places that I hadn't imagined, but a lot of the score was written before we ever started shooting, so I was playing the score to Saoirse as she was acting scenes or running around the house, she actually had the music playing, so she could get into the rhythm of the scene.
CS: Was this the first time you'd worked with kids this extensively?
Wright: Yeah.
(At this point, Joe Wright's handler said "Last question" forcing us to wait to ask him more about this until we talked in London weeks later—see below)
CS: What about your next movie? Are you going to start that fairly soon?
Wright: "The Soloist" we start shooting in January, and that's kind of quite daunting, but exciting. Jamie Foxx is starring with Robert Downey Jr., and it's kind of about sanity and homelessness in Los Angeles. It's a period film, it's set in 2005, which is a very specific period and I'm looking forward to going on the adventure of shooting in downtown Los Angeles.
And here's some more with Joe from the London junket for the film:
CS: Can you talk about the vision you had for the film between the sound effects and the flashbacks and that incredible tracking shot?
Wright: I don't know. "Vision" is a difficult word, isn't it? When I read the book, I kind of saw a film happening as I read it, and it was a film that I felt very desperate to realize. It kind of got under my skin. I felt like I knew how to make it and yet at the same time was terrified by the challenges posed by it, so there are certain tentpole moments if you like, and then through the process of discovering. Every time I thought I knew what the book was about and thought I understood the thing, something else would come and hit me from the side and I'd realize that I was only just scratching the surface, and the book revealed itself to me, layer after layer after layer, so it was a wonderful process of learning basically. So it developed, and the sounds were something that were inherent in the beginning, the typewriter was an idea that came quite early, and that led to staccato rhythms in other places, but it was always trying to find cinematic equivalents to McEwan's masterpiece really. So it was all from the book. The challenge was how do you find this equivalent devices to tell this story.
CS: Christopher Hampton said that he'd been working on this for some time but it was good you had a very clear vision of what you wanted to do.
Wright: There was an initial idea, which was to stay faithful to the book, but tell the story as faithfully and clearly as you can. Don't try and mess with it, don't try to fix it. It's a masterpiece, it's not broken, it doesn't need fixing. That was really important, and what I found, the draft that existed before I came on had done away with the three-part structure, had done away with replaying events from different points of view, and what I found interesting was the modernity of that structure, and how it felt like a very contemporary film... and indeed is a very contemporary film. It's set in the present and then looks back at a destructive past, but all of those things I felt were there in the novel and just needed to be realized as I say in cinematic form.
CS: As a follow-up to my question two months ago, can you talk about the challenges of doing scenes with lots of kids or young actors? You haven't done much with kids before, had you?
Wright: One of my first short films, which was the film that kind of spring-boarded my career in television involved a kid of eight, and you've got the fallback position of the fact if you get a kid to do absolutely nothing and then cut to a shot of a couple having sex in the library, then cut back to a kid doing absolutely nothing, you're going to project all the fear and all the misunderstanding onto that kid's face. So I knew I had that fallback position, and this was obviously also the experiments of Eisenstein and Wertoff. It's montage, so I knew I could fall back on that, but then I met Saoirse Ronan and Saoirse just came and blew me away. She's the most talented person I ever met in my life, inherently so, and taught me more about talent than anyone else really. She's just got a weird acting gene. It's quite freakish. Her father is an actor. They live in Ireland and her father had heard there was a film being made on "Atonement" through his Dublin agent and put her on tape, they made a little tape together, of Saoirse doing some of the scenes and sent it over to us. This tape arrived and we watched it with due diligence and suddenly, it was like a revelation. Then I met her and was like, "Why are you putting on that weird Irish accent?" It was strange. She could just do it, playing Briony, and she's totally unlike Briony in every way. She's very sociable, she's very warm, she's very, very funny. She kind of has a strange intuitive ability to understand what the atmosphere is and what the mood is and respond accordingly to make it better. She looked after me, really, and yet she's similar to Briony in one respect and that's that she has an extraordinarily strong imagination, and that imagination allows her to empathize with other people and to empathize with the character she's playing. Her performance is an act of empathy, which is great, because it means that there's very little mopping up for me to do afterwards as well. It's not a matter of her dredging up emotions from her past. She hasn't got any past. She's had a very happy life, but what she does is imagine it, and that's extraordinary I think.
CS: Is it true that originally you wanted Keira to play Briony?
Wright: Yeah, I imagined that Keira was the same person that I'd met on "Pride & Prejudice." You spend all your time editing and looking at these people in the cutting room and so I kind of imagined she was that person still I think, and therefore wasn't sophisticated enough to place Cecelia, but then she turned up at the Toronto Film Festival in this dress and suddenly, she developed into this woman, and that was kind of extraordinary, and I wanted to try and capture that change and realized that she was perfect for Cecelia.
CS: Can you talk about the '30s/'40s conventions you brought back in the movie in terms of the strong, silent women as personified by Cecelia?
Wright: One of the things I found most interesting in our experiments in rehearsals was playing with the dialect and the accent and learning about the fact that people think of '30s dialect as clipped consonants, and actually, that's true, but also they shortened the vowels a lot, and the vowels is where the emotions are held, which is why Americans often sound very emotional because they have very long vowels. That sense of no space for emotion meant that Kiera had to express emotions in different ways with physicality and with her eyes, and that was good fun to play with.
CS: Are you going to be able to start "The Soloist" in January as planned?
Wright: That's happening. We have the script ready. Susannah Grant delivered the script like on the Saturday before the strike started on the Monday.
CS: Have you found the locations in L.A. where you're going to shoot?
Wright: Yup, I've been in L.A. for nearly two months now and we're in the process.
Atonement opens in select cities on Friday, December 7.
They were ment [sic] to atone...
Of course I had to see this as soon as I could. It opened yesterday in limited release, and I found one theater that was playing it. It was difficult to find the theater and it was raining pretty hard as well, but I would not be stopped.
My only real problem with the movie is that it wasn't long enough. I won't talk about it in very much detail until at least some other people have seen it, but the movie condenses 4 years into 2 hours. It's remarkably faithful to the book, and very well paced. So all the events in the book make it to the movie, and it doesn't, for the most part, feel rushed. That was quite amazing. However, for me, it didn't have the sheer weight of the novel, due to it being only 2 hours. I think the story demanded at least another half-hour, or could have been a very powerful 3-hour movie.
I'm eager to see it again, though. It's a beautiful movie. It captures very perfectly the detail of the book, and I heard a few audience members remark on that as they left the theater. It very much feels like the novel come to life, with added visual poetry.
The more I watch the movie on its own terms, the more I'll come to love it, I'm sure. I'm very curious what people who haven't read the book will think of it.
Quote from: matt35mm on December 08, 2007, 06:58:17 PM
I'm very curious what people who haven't read the book will think of it.
In short: I loved everything that you loved about it, and missed all of the problems you had with it. Best of both worlds. And of course, not knowing about the ending beforehand, it caught me by surprise and hit hard.
This really is an astoundingly haunting and deep film. Joe Wright has become a director I'll always keep an eye out for, after catching me completely off guard with Pride & Prejudice and then following that up with a movie as powerful as Atonement. He has such a strong visual sense, but also has a rare aptitude for theme and motif, and simply has a talent for wrenching emotions out of the audience, though never in a cheap, manipulative way. Great, great movie. Everyone should see it.
Haven't seen this film yet, but these reviews make me want to. Joe Wright has an interview on NPR from this past week, you can probably search www.npr.org and find it. Very good discussion, he talks about meeting the author of Atonement and how his dyslexia influences his work.
Saw this last night, and I really liked it. Missed the very beginning, due to bad weather, but got there in time to see the bit where Keira Knightly climbed out of the fountain soaking wet. Really liked the whole Britishness of it all (made me miss home). Actually lots of the War-era London bits reminded me of 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' for some reason. The soundtrack was awesome - the use of typewriter sounds as threatening music which starts to take over itself and lose control underscored Briony's desire to become a novelist, and of course the letter which caused the inciting incident. There seemed to be a lot of moments in the film where certain things seemed to be out of focus, or distorted so you couldn't tell what it was. At first I thought it was just cos I was sitting in the third row, but then I realised it must have been intentional - again making us think about perception and how it's not always clear what we see. I hope it was that. Awesome shot on the beach at Dunkirk. Throughout, actually, I kept thinking to myself that this was an awesome piece of cinema. It may not be the best film of the year, but it's definitely a fresh breath of air, and left me excited for whatever Joe Wright does next. James McAvoy was, as ever, awesome. He is a great actor, to have done this, 'Last King of Scotland', 'Becoming Jane' and my personal favorite 'Starter For Ten' within the last 2 years... fuck... For those not already watching him, you'd better start. Just hope that 'Wanted' does something good for his career, and not what I'm fearing... Keira was as gorgeous and as wonderful as ever. The first act of the film belonged to her, no question. She just wasn't in the rest of it enough for me. Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Mays were scene-stealers. And there was one shot where a character looks out of the window and sees an elderly lady push a baby pram down the road. Fuck. That just did something to me. As I said before, not the best film of the year. Far from it. But plenty of stuff to like in there. Really great cinema.
spoiler-free
- this is a fantastic movie. i saw it for the second time tonight and it was better than the first with the knowledge of how the story unfolds. but don't watch the trailer. or forget you did. i'm glad i did(n't).
- this movie contains what may be the shot of the year. you'll know which one i'm talking about. there are so many brilliantly executed moments.
spoils
- i love the theme at the core of the story/central character: how fantasy can hurt and help us. Briony is a wonderfully tragic character because she cannot step out of the fantasy. i think in the end Redgrave sees the ambiguity within the character towards fantasy, but Joe Wright/the composer doesn't quite. but it's there. and i can see how the less ambiguous score would be appealing when you focus on C and Robbie. that kid who played Briony gave the best child performance i've seen in a long time. it's a great character for an actor to play because of this fantasy attachment. this was a reeeeally well-cast movie. even Guy Who Looks Like Robbie was great.
Quote from: picolas on December 25, 2007, 01:57:56 AM- this movie contains what may be the shot of the year. you'll know which one i'm talking about. there are so many brilliantly executed moments.
the follow article obviously contains spoils for the shot, but also a spoil for a shot in twbb5-Minute `Atonment' Shot Joins Long ListThe story of the long tracking shot would be best told in one take.
Our camera could begin with Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," pass through Jean-Luc Godard's "Week End" and Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" and finally arrive at the latest installment in the canon: Joe Wright's "Atonement."
Through cinema history, audacious, lengthy tracking shots have captivated filmmakers and movie buffs who marvel at their grace and choreography. In a medium predicated on storytelling through the juxtaposition of images, the long tracking shot is the cinematic equivalent of a no-hitter in baseball: rare, untouched, and very difficult to pull off.
In the middle of "Atonement," a 5 1/2-minute shot unfolds as Robbie, a British WWII soldier (James McAvoy), comes upon France's Dunkirk beach, where the final point in the British retreat from the Germans is portrayed as a grim circus of defeat and chaos.
In the Ian McEwan novel from which the movie was adapted, the scene is described in just a few pages. McEwan writes: "It was a rout and this was its terminus." On film, though, it took a lot more doing.
The scene was composed with 1,000 extras, a number of horses and vehicles on the beach, and (digitally added) ships off the coast. It all cost a sizable chunk of the film's estimated $30 million production budget and had to be shot in one day.
That's how long the hundreds of extras were available for, and that small time frame is what initially drove Wright and his director of photography, Seamus McGarvey, to stage the single long shot, rather than squeeze in a dozen separate setups.
"It was conceived out of necessity," said Wright in a recent interview. "We had one day with the extras and then the small issue of the tide coming in and washing away the entire set."
While the tide was out and the light was right, Wright and his crew managed three and a half takes the fourth finally exhausting Steadicam operator Peter Robertson. (They used the third take.)
During production on other scenes, Robertson's course was mapped out, meandering through the shambled beach sometimes on foot, sometimes riding on a motorized cart.
"When we were making it, I didn't see it in the context of the classic tracking shot, or the history of great tracking shots," said Wright, whose "Pride & Prejudice" included a long shot, as did his British TV film "Charles II." "It felt much, much smaller than that."
But of course, the shot has been received precisely in that context.
Variety deputy editor Anne Thompson blogged: "This shot has its admirers and detractors. It's a stunning shot, but does it take the viewer out of the movie, or serve a dramatic purpose? ... I for one get a kick out of bravura shots like this, whether it's Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Robert Altman, Orson Welles, Antonioni or Alfonso Cuaron."
Perhaps the highest possible praise for such cinematic devices would echo that of umpires in baseball they're doing their job well when no one even notices them.
New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, however, said the "Atonement" shot's only impression is: "`Wow, that's quite a tracking shot,' when it should be `My God, what a horrible experience that must have been.'"
Any discussion of tracking shots typically begins with Orson Welles' opening to 1958's "Touch of Evil," where Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh walk unknowingly alongside a car with explosives in its trunk.
Welles, by then a veteran director, had with director of photography Gregg Toland pioneered the use of deep focus on Welles' first film, 1941's "Citizen Kane." That meant more realism and fluidity for the camera, which could now present a foreground, middle ground and background. The apotheosis of this is reached in tracking shots that hold a film's realism for long periods.
"For the actors, they really enjoy them because you're in a situation where there's a fourth wall created," said Wright. "There's no area on the set they have to imagine; it's all in front of them."
Among the most famous is Godard's ten-minute shot in "Week End" in which a couple are stranded in a traffic jam, as well as Mikhail Kalatozov's acrobatic shot in 1964's "I Am Cuba." The conclusion to Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger" (1975) is revered, as is Scorsese's legendary shot in "Goodfellas" where Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco enter the Copacabana.
Some films have attempted to push the limits of uncut film, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948), which he had wanted to film in one take but settled for just ten. In 2002, Aleksandr Sokurov achieved Hitchcock's goal with "Russian Ark," a film that portrays three centuries of Russian history in one shot.
Many of these shots have become a matter of movie lore, and are often paid homage. Robert Altman composed an comic and highly self-reflexive eight-minute tracking shot to open "The Player" (1992) featuring characters discussing the "Touch of Evil" shot. In Doug Liman's "Swingers" (1996), his characters worshipfully chat about Scorsese's "Goodfellas" achievement.
Technology has helped a new generation of filmmakers accomplish increasingly daring tracking shots, particularly with the use of Steadicams. Alfonso Cuaron's "Childen of Men" (2006) featured several lengthy shots, including a daring Steadicam- and crane-aided shot during a shoot-out.
"One has to completely bow to the fact that when Orson Welles did the `Touch of Evil' shot, he didn't have a Steadicam," said Wright. "Steadicams have totally liberated the tracking shot."
Paul Thomas Anderson has made the tracking shot a trademark of his, particularly in "Boogie Nights" (1997) and "Magnolia" (1999). His new, acclaimed "There Will Be Blood" is shot in a different style, but does contain one shot where the camera tracks Daniel Day-Lewis's character carrying his injured child.
"It's only impressive because Daniel could actually carry that boy for that long," joked Anderson in an interview.
The director, a great fan and friend to the late Altman, said a guiding ethos of is to have fewer cuts: "The more things can be condensed or simple is ideal," he said.
Discussing the appeal of the tracking shot, Anderson said: "You're after one thing, which is nice, as opposed to 10 or 15 small things when you have to chop it up. You get that terrific feeling at the end of it, like `We did it. We got it.' Or you don't."
Digital editing, Anderson said, has given him a new perspective on the length of his takes.
"You really see the length of your shots. It's kind of hilarious. You sort of look at the graph and it chops along, chops along, then flatlines for a long time. You see a movie as a graph."
For Wright's next film, "The Soloist," which is now in preproduction, he acknowledges one scene is tempting to shoot in one long take, but was reluctant to do it "just for the sake of doing them."
Still, the long tracking shot remains a tantalizing tool and exhibit of cinematic virtuosity.
"Filmmaking by nature is about montage and in a way there's something quite rebellious about the long tracking shot," said Wright. "I just think they're a wonderful challenge and a wonderful game."
spoils for the shotQuote from: MacGuffin on December 26, 2007, 02:56:02 PMNew York Times film critic A.O. Scott, however, said the "Atonement" shot's only impression is: "`Wow, that's quite a tracking shot,' when it should be `My God, what a horrible experience that must have been.'"
why can't it be both? don't tell me you didn't get both, AO.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I just read the book over the past few days and now I'm really excited to see it and be let down by it.
The film is still a few weeks from my city, but because of Matt's excitement, I bought the novel and plan to read it before seeing the film. I can only imagine my feelings will be like Ghostboy's. I found an interview with the author on The New Republic's homepage. Among numerous subjects, he discusses the adaptation of his novel.
The TNR Q&A
by Isaac Chotiner
'Atonement' author Ian McEwan on Bellow, the Internet, atheism, and why his books are still scary.
The film adaptation of English writer Ian McEwan's prize-winning novel Atonement opened last month to widespread critical acclaim. Winners of the Golden Globes will be announced this weekend, and Atonement sits on top of the field, with the most nominations of any film. Isaac Chotiner spoke with McEwan about letting go, growing up, and why atheists need to speak out.
Was it hard to watch Atonement be adapted to film by other people? Did you feel possessive?
I'm fairly used to the process. I think this is the fifth or sixth of my stories or novels that have been made into films. I'm sure I'd be possessive if I allowed myself to get involved in the writing of the script. There's a lot to be said for not doing that. I did it once with The Innocent and John Schlesinger, and it was a fairly difficult process because everyone--the director, the designers, actors, everyone--had their own ideas and came piling in. And you are suddenly knocked off your perch as the God in this machine. It is better to have someone take a free run at it. But I can't quite walk away, so I like to stay involved. I like film sets, and I enjoy the collaborative process. I'm not sure if I had the worst of both worlds or the best.
One of the great things about the book is the way you get inside the head of Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old girl. Were you worried that film is a medium in which it is harder to get inside a character's head?
Well, it is impossible for a movie to give you what a novel can give you, which is the flavor of rolling thoughts and consciousness. But you have to do the best with what you've got, which with movies is a high dependence on actors to somehow let us feel the illusion that we can follow a thought process. And I think the casting of Briony with Saoirse Ronan was really astute. She is a very watchful girl, a completely intuitive young actress.
Earlier in your career, you were known as "Ian Macabre." Though there is less of what you call the darkness and violence that was marked your stories 25 years ago, your newer work still has a level of intensity and discomfort. I'm thinking particularly of the sex scene in your latest novel, On Chesil Beach.
Some of the dark-hearted stuff from those short stories still lives on, whether it is the beginning of Enduring Love or the scene toward the end of Saturday or even elements of Atonement. But it is bound to change. One passes the usual milestones in life: You have children, you find that whether you like it or not, you have a huge investment in the human project somehow succeeding. You become maybe a little more tolerant as you get older. Pessimism begins to feel something like a badge that you perhaps do not wear so easily. There is something delicious and reckless about the pessimism of being 21. And when you get older you feel maybe a little more delicate and hope that things will flourish. You don't want to take a stick to it.
I want to read you a quote from James Wood in The New Yorker about Philip Roth's latest book: "How much of any self is pure invention? Isn't such invention as real to us as reality? But then how much reality can we bear? Roth knows that this kind of inquiry, far from robbing his fiction of reality, provokes an intense desire in his readers to invest his invented characters with solid reality." A lot of Atonement is about the question of what is real in fiction, and I was curious for your thoughts about literary realism these days.
The kind of fiction I like and the kind of fiction I most often want to write does have its feet on the ground of realism, certainly psychological realism. I have no interest in magical realism and the supernatural--that is really an extension, I guess, of my atheism. I think that the world, as it is, is so difficult to capture that some kind of enactment of the plausibly shared reality that we inhabit is a very difficult task. But it is one that fascinates me. I have just re-read a couple of Saul Bellow novels, Mr. Sammler's Planet and The Dean's December. I really get a thrill from his engagement with the momentous task of what it is like to be in the 20th century in Chicago or even Bucharest, what the condition is, what it's like, how it is now. This is something that modernism shied away from--the pace of things, the solid achievement of weight in your hand. So I remain rather committed to that. But also to what is psychologically real--the small print of consciousness, the corners and vagaries of thinking that when you read them in another writer, and they are done well, you just know they are right. Not only because you had this thought to yourself, but because that way of thinking seems so ineradicably human.
You mentioned Bellow. Who are the writers you are particularly drawn to now, people you have stuck with?
Really, your amazing triptych, one now dead, of Bellow, Roth, and Updike. They have been voices all the way through my writing life, from the time I started writing. I read Portnoy's Complaint, Rabbit Run, and Mr. Sammler, and there was nothing like that happening in Britain or for that matter in Europe, so far as I could tell. It has something to do with a largeness of ambition, a generosity of imagination, and a wicked sense of humor, particularly in Portnoy. It comes back to that kind of realism, with that wish to engage with conditions as they are now, to capture the city or the moment in time. We had nothing so sparkling. So, yes, I have kept faith with those guys.
What are your online habits? Do you surf the web?
Well, I like Edge very much, Arts and Letters is a great resource for me, and then the whole slew of American magazines. I like that tradition-The New Republic, etc. I get them now quite regularly.
Do you read any online reviews?
I don't read the blogs much. I don't like the tone-the rather in-your-face road-rage quality of a lot of exchange on the Internet. I don't like the threads that come out of any given piece of journalism. It seems that when people know they can't be held accountable, when they don't have eye contact, it seems to bring out a rather nasty, truculent, aggressive edge that I think slightly doesn't belong in the world of book reviewing.
I just read a quote of yours, "Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious convictions," and I have noticed that recently you have been talking a little more about atheism. You also contributed an essay to a new book called The Portable Atheist. What are your thoughts on the "New Atheist" movement, which has gotten so much publicity and sold so many books in the last year or so. Do you think it differs from strains of atheism in the past?
I am a little baffled as to why it is called the "New Atheism." There is a very long tradition of free thinking, and the arguments made against religion tend to be the same but made over and over again. But I think what has happened is that there have been a number of good, articulate books--Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, Sam Harris, and so on. What they have discovered to their own great surprise is that in the United States, and right across the South too, there are an enormous number of people who also think this way. I don't think they have suddenly been persuaded by this rash of books--the feelings were there anyway--but they didn't have a voice, they didn't have a focus. When Hitchens took his book across the Bible Belt and debated with Baptist ministers in churches, there were huge audiences, most of whom, it seems, from when they spoke to him afterwards, were somewhat irritated that the place in the United States that they lived in was called the Bible Belt. I think there was something there that people had not taken into account. Quite heartening really, given that America is meant to be a secular republic with a strong tradition of upholding all freedom of thought.
Do you see religion as ineradicable, or do you think there is a chance to change people's minds on religion?
I think it is ineradicable, and I think it is a terrible idea to suppress it, too. We have tried that and it joins the list of political oppression. It seems to be fairly deeply stitched into human nature. It seems to be part of all cultures, so I don't expect it to vanish. And yet at the same time, if it is built into human nature, why are there so many people who don't believe in it? I think it is important that people with no religious beliefs speak up and speak for what they value. It is a bit of a problem, the title "Atheist"--no one really wants to be defined by what they do not believe in. We haven't yet settled on a name, but you wouldn't expect a Baptist minister to go around calling himself a Darwinist. But it is crucial that people who do not have a sky god and don't have a set of supernatural beliefs assert their belief in moral values and in love and in the transcendence that they might experience in landscape or art or music or sculpture or whatever. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, it makes them give more valence to life itself. The little spark that we do have becomes all the more valuable when you can't be trading off any moments for eternity.
I didn't read the book but the movie didn't really affect me much. I liked the summery romance stuff in the beginning, but couldn't feel much of the pain or guilt or just the looming darkness in general in the subsequent scenes. I appreciated those shots and moments, but felt like everything was too glamorous to be taken seriously. Too many trailer-worthy shots, it had no momentum, and the characters had too many melodramatic moments too close to each other for the individual moments to mean anything. Every scene stood by itself but there was very little to carry the film forward. I really wanted to like them but I came away feeling nothing in the end.
Atonement just won BEST PICTURE DRAMA :yabbse-thumbdown:
What are your problems with the movie, Tommy?
SPOILERS
I've seen this three times now, and it gets better each time. The first time that I saw it, it was difficult to experience without referencing the book in my mind. I was sort of studying the movie and not getting very into it.
By the third time, I was completely absorbed by it. Elements of the filmmaking became much more impressive to me. The camera tells the story beautifully, poetically, and remains consistent with Briony's point of view as an author. Bits that seem strange or perhaps over-the-top in the first viewing work much more wonderfully within the structure and flow of the film--key parts being the long Steadicam shot and the "rewind" part that happens as Robbie falls asleep in the cellar-type place. These were distracting to me the first time, not because they weren't nice, but because they took me out of the story a bit. The shock value was only there for the first viewing, and subsequent viewings allowed me to access the poetic nature of these moments. I marveled at them in a similar way to how I marveled at Ian McEwan's writing, which is also consistent with Briony's writing. There are many moments in which McEwan's book, Briony's book, and the film each enhance each other. It's a wonderful experience.
The score is incredibly strong. I bought the soundtrack, and just in listening to it without watching the film, I see how it tells the story--it is again an element of Briony's point of view. It presents Briony as she is writing the book, most obviously through the use of the typewriter sound, but also in motifs that repeat at key moments, and the shape of certain themes... you can hear the story being told as you listen to the soundtrack--it's the omnipresent voice of the writer, Briony.
The acting is marvelous, as well. It's so good that I don't know how to begin talking about it. The people from the book are so wholly there on the screen, and I lose all sense of the acting, even though the kind of acting is not entirely naturalistic. I can't think of much more to say about this right now, except to praise the actors and director in their choices.
There are a few weak moments in the film, but I cannot think of how to make them better. In other words, I now think that this is the strongest film that could have been made from the book, and it is a strong film indeed. One weak moment is unfortunately a very key moment where we see that the wrong letter had been given to Briony. I was fascinated by the construction of the scene (we see Briony run off with the letter then dolly sideways back to Robbie as he sharply turns his head and mumbles "Briony?"; then a repeat of a previous shot extended to show that the wrong letter was picked up; then back to Robbie realizing and shouting "Briony!"), but maybe not convinced that it could happen. The book was far more convincing in this regard, telling that, of course, Robbie sabotaged himself. This is an important detail that is missing from the film, but I have no idea how it could be shown without being ridiculous. Not buying into this moment could be fatal for the story in the eyes of the viewer, though most audiences do not seem to be bothered by it.
Anyway, that's all I've got to say because I've got to go. I'll just quickly say that it is a wonderful film that is worthy of the novel that I adore while being incredibly fascinating on its own terms.
I bought the novel and began to read it, but couldn't finish it before the movie hit my city. I have so much on my plate I was forced to see the movie sooner than I wanted to, but here is my review. Spoilers everywhere:
Let's get the obvious out of the way - The film is beautiful and lyrical. Joe Wright has technically developed from Pride and Prejudice in that he has made his camera a commentar in the film's world than just a recorder. He does well to pin point the camera as the gager of young Briony's imaginative thoughts. Parts of the romance are even inviting and charming.
The bigger interest, for me, lays in the structural situation. Joe Wright seemingly adapts the novel true to its original form. The story is a self reflective, post modernist comment on a classical love story. As the film tells the story of Cecilia and Robbie and their unhopeful romance, evidence starts to come through that their tale is fictional. The whole story comes out though when Briony is interviewed at an older stage and admits the story being told has been done so in her mind and is part of a final novel she is writing.
the admittance of the title to describe the film being shown relates back to meta fiction, but it is also a structural comment on our association with love stories to make tragedies have new meaning. Her character can't make her sister and her lover come back to life and live out their lives, but she can make them have the ending they deserved in her new novel. She describes this as good for them, but it is really help herself deal with the guilt of how she split them up.
The idea is a fascinating one, but the film doesn't take it far enough for serious study. Our objective of the real Briony exists in the fable she tells. We get a new perspective on her in the interview, but that is all. The more interesting portrait would have been to detail her life more and how she coped with the guilt over the years, but we get a film that is suppose to be geniune all the way through and then throws over the veil at the end to reveal its secret, but it's not enough. Swimming Pool also did this with a mystery story, but lacked true interest because it didn't relate how it was meaningful to the main protaganist for her to make up this story. It expected us to be wowed by a plot device that isn't even that novel.
Atonement is better than Swimming Pool because we do relate the reasons and meaning back to Briony's desire to make her past wrongs right, but the film lacks a sufficient investigation of the fable and the reality because it puts so much emphasis on the fictionalized love story of Cecilia and Robbie. Many people will judge this film by how convincing their love story is when it was meant to exist on a lower level of importance because the greatest tragedy really resides in Briony. We just don't get enough of her feelings.
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on January 24, 2008, 06:15:13 PM
He does well to pin point the...(read more)
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Quote from: Hedwig on January 24, 2008, 06:39:28 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on January 24, 2008, 06:15:13 PM
He does well to pin point the...(read more)
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We just have to settle for being GT's sloppy seconds nowadays.
Quote from: polkablues on January 24, 2008, 07:51:22 PM
Quote from: Hedwig on January 24, 2008, 06:39:28 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on January 24, 2008, 06:15:13 PM
He does well to pin point the...(read more)
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We just have to settle for being GT's sloppy seconds nowadays.
Hate to say it, but Facebook is addicting. I only have the site to review films and books. I just have to limit what I import here because I doubt many want to see my recent review of 2001: A Space Odyssey....
now you have to post it.
Quote from: Lucid on January 30, 2008, 03:13:24 PM
I was disappointed. I read the book beforehand and pretty much enjoyed it until the last third, then all of those tiny nagging problems I had with the beginning were magnified. Some of these problems were even more pronounced in the movie; I didn't feel connected to any of the characters, who were pretty much one-dimensional and lacked depth (especially poor Cecilia), I found the pacing too rapid and didn't buy the love story, and worst of all, Briony wasn't given enough of an authorial presence in the movie. That's one thing the book had going for it. Joe Wright is obviously a really capable director who made a movie that looks beautiful, but it doesn't extend much further than that for me. Maybe he was just dealing with some poor source material because something went wrong along the way. I was most sad that Robbie's character seemed diluted and was missing the complexity that McEwan gave him, especially during the WWII sequence (the only part of the novel I felt a hint of affinity toward).
I'm glad I wasn't the only one because I was questioning myself on if I was missing something.
**SPOILERS**
It's gonna sound like I hated this movie, but I don't. It's just a lot of things didn't sit right with me. I too didn't feel the chemisty between Cecilia and Robbie. I couldn't take the editing of the film and the way it would present the scenes twice from the different POVs. It would have played out better linearly. It felt like it was trying to stay faithful to the book (which I have not read), but this way of storytelling didn't adapt well to the big screen. The typewriter score felt like it drew too much attention to itself. The jump from the arrest to the war was too clean, and felt spending some time with Robbie in prison would have served the longing between him and Cecilia better. The long, much talked about tracking shot, while was a great looking shot, seemed to bring the film to a halt to take time for a long, much talked about tracking shot and really did nothing to move the story forward. If cut, nothing would have been lost, except a long, much talked about tracking shot. It picked up with we got to adult Briony, and was hoping for some redemption from both the film and her character. I thought the scene where she was speaking French with the soldier was beautiful, as was her coming clean scene with her and Cecilia and Robbie. But the ending completely offended me. As an audience member, I felt totally manipulated. She gives them their happiness, yes, but at the expence of her audience, and it felt like her character never really did learn her lesson and how far the extent of what she did reached. Like I said, it looks like I'm tearing this film apart, and I don't have hatred for it. I just felt like the grounds for a better film where there.
I didn't hate this movie either. But I was just disappointed.
The critics loved this film over here, that's usually a good thing, and so I went to see it with a lot of enthusiasm.
I was let down. Sorry.
I recently saw this for a second time, just to make sure if maybe I was wrong.
But to tell you the truth nothing changed. I still liked the same parts (Ronan, score, camera/light, first act, keira wet) and disliked the same (ending, the chorus, the script). I think MacGuffin explains a lot of these dislikes for me.
I don't agree about the score with him, it was one of the highlights for me.
Well, I respect your love for this film and book Matt, everybody their own taste, and sorry I was so basic with just a thumbs down after Atonement winning the globe for best drama.
I don't really feel like criticizing the film to the bone because it doesn't deserve that, it most definitely has good things.
However my first reaction was disappointment for atonement. I certainly liked another book of his adapted called Enduring Love.
So it wasn't something I had against the novelist either.
Just saw this and I'm ambivalent about it. There's some great stuff here but more than any other film I've seen recently, I feel the need to see it again to judge completely. This has been happening lately with the films I've seen (Sweeney Todd, Cloverfield, No Country and this), but in this case, there was too much going on.
The transitions from one moment in time to another were very effective on me, and the tracking shot, specially, finnally had me sad and depressed, which I think was the porpuse. It became such a heavy, increasingly desperate situation that by the end of it it was clear to me damages have been done to this character that would never heal. I don't even care about people complaining this shot is some sort of empty spectacle. That's fucking stupid. That shot is ajust another visual tool and the only people who ever make a fuzz about such things are "movie" people. I don't really understand what's so bothersome about a great shot that tells something economically in a movie, for fuck's sakes.
It's kind of cheesy but I wanted more screentime for Briony as a kid. She was awesome and even though the actress that plays her at 18 is also great I kept seeing the little girl all the way through, and I kept wanting her to show up for some reason.
The camera work is beautiful. Joe Wright is becoming a guy to watch for real. I liked the score and the use of classical music, but I'm also disapointed with how they used the score in the final scene. Like they artificially want you to feel a certain way about the whole thing while you know damn well not everything is that simple.
I also wanted more ef Keira cause she really gives a lot of depth with very little time to her character. McAvoy is great too.
All in all this was a treat.
I'm in the same didn't-hate-but-not-great boat. I thought the first half of the film was absolutely awesome. I was nudging my fiancee, whispering "This director is amazing!" Seriously, I need to keep up with Joe Wright, there was some really smart stuff going on at the beginning.
However, once the big turn takes place, I kinda started getting bored with it. And maybe it's because I knew about it, but I was not that impressed with the big steadicam shot at the beach. It seemed like the characters' actions were motivated by having a big, fast, sweeping steadicam in front of them, and they walked around the beach as such. Being technically impressive doesn't mean your enhancing or telling the story any better.
I am excited about seeing this again, however.
SPOILERS
Btw, I saw this in LA, so the theater was packed and I had to sit up front. And there was nothing more exhilarating than watching C-U-N-T slam up on the screen from so close.
Spoilers
I'm hearing the same criticisms, but I think the point of the film is that it becomes less engaging and less believable as it goes along. The audience is suppose to read the film as a track of Briony's memory and thoughts. The first part of the story (her as a youngster) are her legitimate memories while the later stories are the fabrication to make a bad memory beautiful. The director is excellent because he washes the first part with exuberant colors and tones. He is allowing the filmmaking speak for the texture of feeling we associate with our true memories. The best thing is that since the film doesn't have a clear break between the beautiful and ordinary of filmmaking tones, instead it is gradual, the audience isn't clear when the reality becomes fabrication.
My major problem with the film is that it doesn't cover Briony as an elder adult enough. It doesn't give us enough forethought to the meaning the story has with the real Briony. We get an excuse it is to make the couple she betrayed happy, but obviously it's for herself, to make her be able to deal better with the guilt. I would have liked to understand the context better.
I think briony and ian mcewan had noble intentions, but the concept of an untrustworthy narrator is far from new, and the technique of a fabricated ending is not above Wayne's World. Ultimately the ending depended on whether or not one bought Briony's heavy guilt, or the forlorn hope between the lovers. Therefore I don't think the point is for the film to feel less and less detached, or, as GT said, less engaging and less believable. I think the film (I'm sure the book was better or whatever) wants to walk a fine balance between a good-fashioned love story and some kinda post-structuralist twist. But I, for one, never felt the second half of the film was from briony's point of view until she went ahead and declared it at the very end of the film, therefore all the emotional weight that was supposed to come with the twist was robbed because it was all mere information. The "sense of fabrication" also became an easy way out for any scene that wasn't working - "the battle scenes felt phony", "oh, well, it came from a limited writer"...etc. There were too many aspects of the film that just felt like bad decisions, as opposed to mysteries that all came clear at the final interview: the type-writer music, the glamorized shots of Everything, the evenly split scenes between the characters with stories that abruptly began and finished...etc. But most of all, it was edited in a way for every scene to feel important and emotional, with no room left for building any type of momentum. There is supposed to be enough guilt left for the emotional ending, but even that actress was replaced (I know I know, you have to get a new person to play an old lady), leaving it an impotent film with some nice shots at the end.
Quote from: pete on February 18, 2008, 12:49:20 PM
I think briony and ian mcewan had noble intentions, but the concept of an untrustworthy narrator is far from new, and the technique of a fabricated ending is not above Wayne's World. Ultimately the ending depended on whether or not one bought Briony's heavy guilt, or the forlorn hope between the lovers. Therefore I don't think the point is for the film to feel less and less detached, or, as GT said, less engaging and less believable. I think the film (I'm sure the book was better or whatever) wants to walk a fine balance between a good-fashioned love story and some kinda post-structuralist twist.
That's what I'm trying to say up above as well. I even said it in my original review.
but you thought it was done intentionally while I thought they just fucked up.
Yet another example of a pointless redesign from the poster to DVD with Negative results. Rather than keeping the original poster (https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maniatv.com%2Fimages%2Fcontent%2Fgeneral%2F0000%2F0963%2Fatonement_poster.jpg&hash=52b45f75957aa5e8677f3345cd755e8231048e66) which is not only visually interesting, but meaningful (the two lovers dominate the image, but are separated by Briony), instead the studio has decided to go with this (https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F41E5%252Bag3-TL._SS500_.jpg&hash=6ccce2b57205fc7d05cdcaff0c62b4521b447553) a generic soft-focus image with over-zealous backlighting, a heavy navy border, and Ariel font title. Why? I don't get it. This happens to good posters all the time, I know we've seen numerous occasions where awesome posters have been replaced by crappy photoshop jobs for the DVD. I guess I can understand it (barely) from a rental point of view for people who haven't heard of the movie and base their movie choices strictly on which stars have got the biggest head on the cover, and which "genre" section of the store it's in. But for those of us who actually go out and spend our hard-earned cash on buying these DVDs, it's a bit of a slap in the face. We want to own the film forever, it's a piece of art after all. So why not package them in the design that drew audiences to see the film in the cinema in the first place? It annoys me. I know it's not just Atonement, but it was just a recent example where the original poster was a thing of beauty, and yet they decided to throw it out in favor of something I could have knocked up on Publisher 10 years ago. End of rant (for now).
that is horrible. makes me want to never buy atonement.
Quote from: Alexandro on March 06, 2008, 11:17:58 AM
that is horrible. makes me want to never buy watch atonement.
Yeeeeesh! That is one of the worst covers I have ever seen.
It doesn't really look final to me, so I'm hoping that it's not final. The original poster even does a better job at showing the actors' faces.
I'm thinking that it's not final because it doesn't have the Focus Features band at the top.
it looks like the kind of pirate copy cover you can find on the streets of mexico...
Quote from: matt35mm on March 06, 2008, 05:04:33 PM
It doesn't really look final to me, so I'm hoping that it's not final. The original poster even does a better job at showing the actors' faces.
I'm thinking that it's not final because it doesn't have the Focus Features band at the top.
Saw a TV commercial, and it used that same cover.
Here (http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/atonement4.html) is the final cover
now we're talking!
Still crap.
Haha, I feel simultaneously validated and unvalidated.