Atonement film

Atonement (film)

Cast

Saoirse Ronan - Briony Tallis, aged 13
Ailidh Mackay - Singing Housemaid

Brenda Blethyn - Grace Turner
Julia West - Betty

James McAvoy - Robbie Turner
Harriet Walter - Emily Tallis

Keira Knightley - Cecilia Tallis
Juno Temple - Lola Quincey
Felix von Simson - Pierrot Quincey
Charlie von Simson - Jackson Quincey
Alfie Allen - Danny Hardman
Patrick Kennedy - Leon Tallis
Benedict Cumberbatch - Paul Marshall
Peter Wight - Police Inspector
Leander Deeny - Police Constable

Atonement is a 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, directed by Joe Wright, and based on a screenplay by Christopher Hampton. It was produced by Working Title Films and filmed throughout the summer of 2006 in Great Britain and France, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Distributed worldwide by Universal Studios, with minor releases through other divisions, the film was released in the UK and Ireland on September 7, 2007, and in North America on December 7, 2007.

As the opening film of the 2007 Venice International Film Festival, Atonement made Wright at the age of 35 the youngest director ever to open this prestigious festival. The film also opened the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Wins
Atonement has been named among the Top 10 Films of 2007 by the Austin Film Critics Association, the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Online, the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.

61st British Academy Film Awards: Best Film (Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster), Best Production Design (Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer)
Golden Tomato Awards: Best Romance
Houston Film Critics Society Awards: Top 10 Films, Best Original Score (Dario Marianelli)
65th Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Original Score - Motion Picture (Dario Marianelli)
International Film Music Critics Association Awards: Film Score of the Year (Dario Marianelli), Best Original Score - Drama (Dario Marianelli), Film Music Composition of the Year (Elegy for Dunkirk, Dario Marianelli)
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards: Best Youth Performance - Female (Saoirse Ronan)
London Film Critics Circle Awards: British Actor of the Year (James McAvoy), British Actress in a Supporting Role (Vanessa Redgrave)
Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards: Top 10 Films, Best Cinematography (Seamus McGarvey), Best Original Score (Dario Marianelli), Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or Supporting Role (Saoirse Ronan)
Satellite Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton)

Synopsis

The film is comprised of four parts, corresponding to the four parts of the novel. Some scenes are shown several times from different perspectives.

Briony Tallis is a 13-year-old aspiring writer from an upper-class English family and the youngest of three. Her older sister Cecilia is educated at Cambridge University alongside their servant's son Robbie Turner, whose school fees are currently paid by Cecilia's father. Though Robbie is headed for medical school soon, he is currently spending the summer gardening on the Tallis estate. Their cousin, Lola Quincey, age 15, and her younger twin brothers are currently visiting the family amidst their parents' divorce. Lastly, Leon – the girls' brother – brings home a friend named Paul Marshall, who owns a chocolate factory that is acquiring a contract to produce army rations. The Tallis family is planning for a special dinner, to which Leon happily invites Robbie (who accepts, much to Cecilia's annoyance).

Briony has just finished writing a play titled The Trials of Arabella, which she describes as about the complications of love. However, her cousins are being difficult with regard to staging the play, much to her frustration. Alone in her bedroom, she happens to witness a significant moment of sexual tension between Robbie and her sister by the fountain, when her sister strips down to her underwear and dips into the fountain. She misinterprets this as aggression on Robbie's part when in fact Robbie and Cecilia are in love, though their feelings have not been resolved. Shortly later Robbie writes drafts of apology letters to Cecilia, including one very explicit erotically charged version. On his way to join the Tallis family celebration, he asks Briony to deliver his letter only to realize too late that it is the erotic note he had not intended Cecilia to read. Briony secretly reads the letter and again misinterprets its meaning; she comes to believe that Robbie is a dangerous sex maniac. When Cecilia reads the letter she is not offended and surprisingly is somewhat elated, though she is angry and embarrassed that Briony has opened it.

That evening Briony encounters Cecilia and Robbie again; this time they are secluded in the library, where they are having sex for the first time. However the scared Briony misinterprets their lovemaking as another one of Robbie's assaults against her sister. At dinner (where Robbie and Cecilia secretly caress hands under the table) the furious Briony is verbally aggressive towards Robbie but is cut off short when her mother tells Briony to fetch the twins. Briony finds a note on their bed saying that they are running away back home and immediately the family members split up to search for the twins on the very large estate. As Briony goes off alone into the darkness to find them, she stumbles upon a tuxedoed man raping Lola. Though Lola – apparently traumatized – claims not to know who her attacker was (since he covered her eyes) Briony is able to convince her that it was Robbie. Back at the estate the police have been contacted. Briony insists that she "knows who did it", raped, Lola. Everyone now believes the attacker to be Robbie, while Cecilia strongly refuses to believe he is guilty. Robbie later returns from the search, with the twins safely in tow, and is arrested and sent to prison, based solely on Briony's testimony.

The story then moves ahead four years, to the opening phases of the Second World War. Robbie, having been convicted but released from prison on condition that he enlist, is a private in the British Expeditionary Force and is hiding in a French attic with two fellow soldiers cut off from their units during the German invasion of France. Here the dénouement of the rape accusation is shown in dialogue and flashback. Before his deployment, he was reunited with Cecilia in London, where they renewed their love, and he made a promise to return to her. Like Cecilia, Briony has joined the nursing corps in London, and has tried unsuccessfully to reach her sister. Cecilia has refused contact, blaming Briony for Robbie's imprisonment. It turns out that Cecilia had broken off contact with all her family, since they all believe in Robbie's guilt.

With his two companions, the wounded and very ill Robbie finally arrives at the beaches of Dunkirk, where he is waiting to be evacuated. He is told that all the soldiers are to leave the next day and falls asleep. Shortly thereafter, at the hospital where she is a probationer nurse, Briony experiences the horror of the evacuation. In one scene, a mortally wounded French soldier dies while she is attempting to comfort him.

Robbie Turner and Cecilia TallisAfter seeing a newsreel showing chocolate magnate Paul Marshall profiting from the war, Briony attends the wedding of Marshall and her cousin Lola. By this time, Briony, who is still attempting to write, has come to understand that she misinterpreted her sister's relationship with Robbie and that she made a disastrous mistake by accusing him. She now knows that the man who was raping Lola on that night was Paul Marshall and that Lola could not admit it. On that day, Briony summons up the courage to visit Cecilia's flat and apologizes to her directly, recanting her accusation. Robbie, apparently having been evacuated from Dunkirk, emerges from Cecilia's bedroom, awakened by the commotion of their argument, and he angrily confronts Briony. Cecilia calms him, but the couple demand that Briony immediately tell her family and the authorities the truth, so that his name can be cleared. Robbie insists that she write to him (without "embellishment or adjectives") precisely what happened, and why she did it, and to give the details to a solicitor. While Cecilia and Robbie assume that a certain servant boy was the culprit, Briony reveals that she knows it was Paul Marshall, who, now having married Lola, cannot be implicated in a court of law by his wife.

The film finally shifts to an elderly Briony being interviewed about her latest novel, Atonement. During this interview, Briony reveals that she is dying of vascular dementia, and that this novel is her last, but that she began it first. Briony admits that, while the novel is autobiographical, the ending of the story has been significantly changed. In reality, she says, she never could summon the courage to see her sister and tell the truth. Robbie had died of septic shock on the last night of the evacuation at Dunkirk (1 June 1940), and Cecilia was drowned in October of 1940, in the Balham tube station disaster during The Blitz. Briony expresses deep remorse and says that this novel, to which she gave an ending different from the reality, had been her chance to give her sister and Robbie the hope and the happiness that they had deserved—and that she had stolen from them. The novel is, therefore, her atonement for the naïve but destructive acts of a 13 year old child, which she has always regretted.

The film closes with a scene of a simple, joyful moment that Cecilia and Robbie might have had, if things had played

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