Atonement (2007)
Review of Atonement (2007), directed by Joe Wright
It’s so hard for me to believe that this movie came out over a decade ago. It’s also very hard for me to believe that Keira Knightley is as old as she is now—having been someone who’s only watched all of her older movies, I imagine it would be very hard to acknowledge the fact that she’s a woman with a kid now.
Absolutely insane. But Atonement is really special to watch in the early 2020s now because of the presence of Saoirse Ronan—this was her first major movie appearance and she absolutely nailed it in this one. Considering she’s Irish and not British, I would’ve been fooled to believe she was a young British girl.
Anyways, Atonement has a certain level of love and nostalgia for people because of the clothing (Keira Knightley’s green dress specifically), for the romantic elements and the fact it is, in a nutshell, a doomed romance, and the fact it’s a Knightley period drama fresh off of her Pride and Prejudice years. That’ll be enough to make most people go nuts.
Let’s dive into this review, shall we?
As romance blossoms in a wealthy English family, a misunderstanding brings tragic consequences.
The year is 1935 and we are placed into the home of the wealthy Tallis family, who live in a nice big home. We originally track the story through the eyes of the younger daughter, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), who aspires to be a writer and is writing plays for her cousins and her to perform for the family.
Her cousins, two redheaded twins and a girl named Lola, all three of whom seem uppity and distant despite the fact their parents have just divorced. While this is happening, Briony spots something out of the window: her sister Cecilia has indecently tripped to her undergarments in front of the housekeeper’s son Robbie and jumped into their fountain.
Briony believes this to be a moment of forced coercion, as she can only see her sister’s face from the distance. Cecilia looks angry, not a bit mortified, at Robert when this happens and storms away.
Briony’s suspicion only grows deeper as she’s asked to give a letter from Robbie to Cecilia and she opens it to discover language that implies that Robbie wants to have sex with her sister. The final straw is when Briony while looking for Cecilia, discovers the two of them having sex in the library right before the family dinner.
Briony now believes that Robbie is forcing her sister to do this, and when her cousin Lola is found raped, Briony accuses Robbie, thus damning his life.
However, we are shown the reverse of what happens. We only saw that from Briony’s perspective, but, in actuality, this was all consent. Cecilia and Robbie were delightfully in love according to the movie, and thus we see how the movie unfolds with them reuniting during the war. Robbie, who is released out of prison to be a soldier, reunites with Cecilia, who is now a nurse.
They haven’t forgotten each other and still have that whirlwind romance. But, in reality, it turns out to be the classic “it was all a dream.” They never met again, and Briony, now a famous novelist and writer, has concocted all of this up in her mind. This is her last story before dying, and, at the very end, she reveals both of them never made it out of the war alive, nor did Briony ever get to apologize for what she had done.
So what makes this movie so special? First of all, it plays on the doomed romance trope. It also is very heavily appealing to the eye visually, as we see Knightley in these romantic clothes that are also charged with sexual energy.
This is seen when she strips down to a nude undergarment, then jumps into the water with it, having it almost sheer and sticking to her bare skin. This is the first moment we see Cecilia as someone who is a sexual being, not the innocent sister that Briony makes her out to be.
Then we have the green dress, which is extremely inaccurate according to fashion history. Women in 1930s England would not be exposing their shoulders and skin like that at all. But for the sake of this movie, it sexualizes Cecilia even further, making her distinctly different from Briony who is dressed almost doll-like. Briony is naively innocent, someone who can’t see the signs of romance and sexual energy between her sister and Robbie.
Something very important to note about this movie as well is the implication of class with Robbie and Cecilia. I’m very sure that Briony had her assumptions about Robbie because he merely was the housekeeper’s son. If he was a dignified nobleman or wealthy just like her, she wouldn’t have probably thought about the way he might go about things.
That’s why she never thought that it was Paul because he was a business tycoon. He was of a certain social class and in her mind, that makes him exempt from being ruled as a potential suspect for Lola’s rape. She was quite literally blinded by prejudice, as she only remembers it was Paul at Lola’s and Paul’s wedding.
I also found fascinating the fact that Briony is now someone recalling this from the lens of being a writer. She takes the autobiographical elements of what has actually happened and then morphs them into this fictional reality that she has created.
But what I want to call into question is that because she is not Cecilia and didn’t witness some of these events, how did Briony ever write what thas happened in an accurate manner? I dare to say she is even an unreliable narrator because of this since it was made clear Cecilia and she never truly made up. She would be missing information from the firsthand source herself.
Overall Thoughts
I say watch this movie for the set and design work meant to bring this world alive. It’s absolutely stunning what lengths were given to create the costumes and interiors of the film, especially when we’re in the section of Briony’s youth. The plot, however, can be a bit lackluster at times and slow.
If you’re not into a doomed war romance, then this isn’t the film for you at all. I think it’s interesting to observe female sexuality in this film, especially as we see Briony as someone who essentially is the keeper of the knowledge of what happened to her sister’s relationship, and how it’s depicted on the screen.
