Period plod

>> Atonement is a tiresome take
on the Ian McEwan novel

by MATTHEW HAYS

Period films are a mixed bag, but the tasteful, British kind, the coffee-table-book variety that the Merchant-Ivory team became famous for delivering usually bore the living hell out of me. When American critic Joe Queenan wrote an article about them, he titled it “Watching the paint dry.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

The latest film from director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice), Atonement is the big-screen adaptation of Ian McEwan’s bestselling novel. Set between the two world wars, it has Keira Knightley playing an upper-class woman who lives on her family’s sprawling and beautiful estate. Enter obligatory commentary on Britain’s rigid class system, in this entry made by one hunky young hired hand (James McAvoy), who lusts after Knightley but is beneath her station, and therefore can’t touch the merchandise.

But wouldn’t you know it, these two can’t keep their eyes off each other, and at one point, repression gives way to passion. Knightley’s younger sister, Briony (played by Saoirse Ronan), witnesses what she thinks is a kinky escapade between the two, and ends up telling tales out of school.

Atonement got some rave reviews when it premiered at the Toronto Film Fest in September, but I’m amazed at just how many critics have been falling for something this flawed. Though it looks good, everything about Atonement is so obvious as to become overwhelming. From virtually the first frame of the film, the characters all have “WE’RE DOOMED” spray-painted on their foreheads in fluorescent colours. You just know something ominous is coming—trust me, I’m not giving anything away—and after a while that just becomes tiresome.

And then, the clincher: the terrible, awful ending. Oh my god, if only—if only—that naïve 13-year-old younger sister hadn’t been such a damn brat, then things would have turned out so much differently. The agony, the irony—could it be that little sis’s name, Briony, is a play on the word?—the pain of thinking about how one little misstep could change the course of these characters’ lives forever.

The burden of thinking about this fate weighed so heavily on my conscience that I had trouble moving my fingers along the keyboard to write this review.

Atonement opens this
Friday, Dec. 7

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