Atonement (2007)

Watching Atonement is like reading Dickens or Joyce; it's so utterly stuffed with superfluous detail that it tends to forget that it needs to have a story. Don't get me wrong, there still is a tale told here, and the details themselves are lavishly produced and include what is easily the most impressive single camera shot I've seen since 2006's Children of Men, but there just isn't a lot to involve the viewer here. It's all exceptionally straight forward stuff, even if its premise is fairly original. In adapting the novel, it seems director Joe Wright got caught up in trying to reinvent the filmcraft of the period romance at the expense of emotional involvement. That doesn't make it a bad movie, but for as many beautiful bits of mise en scène and clever instances of musical scene-setting that populate this movie it just feels like by the end there should be some huge torrent of feeling. But where is it? Probably caught up in the competent but never-exceptional performances, and the rest laying between huge chunks of a timeline that jumps around the long years of its story like a frightened gazelle. If you like looking at beautiful things, there's a lot to enjoy here, but if you're going in for the narrative and catharsis these sorts of aristocratic yarns yield you might be left wanting.

7 out of 10.