Atonement

[Tommy Both]

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.

[Alexandro]

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.

[Gamblour.]

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.

[Gold Trumpet]

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.

[pete]

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.

[Gold Trumpet]

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.

[pete]

but you thought it was done intentionally while I thought they just fucked up.

[Sleepless]

Yet another example of a pointless redesign from the poster to DVD with Negative results. Rather than keeping the original poster 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 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).

[Alexandro]

that is horrible. makes me want to never buy atonement.

[©brad]

that is horrible. makes me want to never buy watch atonement.

[Gamblour.]

Yeeeeesh! That is one of the worst covers I have ever seen.

[matt35mm]

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.

[Alexandro]

it looks like the kind of pirate copy cover you can find on the streets of mexico...

[MacGuffin]

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.

[edison]

Here is the final cover