• ⇤
• ⇽
• ≡
• ⇾
• ⇥

movie review - Atonement

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a story of a young girl who tells stories. One such story accuses a gardener of the rape of her sister despite the fact that she had seen the face of the actual rapist. This straight-up ruins the lives of the accused and her sister. The story we see, where the convict is sent to war and then spends his final days in the ruins of France, is both actually what happens - but also sadly in part a fiction because the way we see the story the gardener comes back and has a life with his beloved is later revealed to be one of the story-teller's fictions.

She relays this fact in an interview as an older woman at the end of her own life. She claims she wrote it that way "to give them something" but to me that's a pale immitation of actual atonement.

This movie is beautifully made, with a great cast and some lovingly terrible depictions of life during the war. But I simply didn't like the story.

Not recommended.