Atonement: The Poll

Atonement: The Poll

****
5
14%
*** 1/2
15
41%
***
11
30%
** 1/2
4
11%
**
1
3%
* 1/2
0
No votes
*
0
No votes
1/2 *
0
No votes
0
1
3%
 
Total votes: 37

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Post by abcinyvr »

Atonement ***
(film 7 of 40+ for me at the Vancouver International Film Festival)

Italiano described it all so well...see his comments below...

Saw the film this morning. Very good. I've not read the novel but I expect, as Italiano pointed out, the film's reverential faithfulness to the novel is unfortunate. It all comes off as being rather lopsided, and thusly for me is a failure as an adaptation. I found the first section, taking place in 1935 was more focused than those taking place during the war - and, yes, Keira's character does all but vanish in the second half.
The tracking shot at Dunkirk is a beauty but I just saw it as pure hubris, sorry Joe.
The acting is very good for all. I was hoping to see more of Brenda Blethyn but she is only in a few scenes. Vanessa Redgrave does in this film as Lynn Redgrave did in Kinsey. Appearing briefly at the end, I wish I had timed it, mostly in close-up and it is just as Italiano says. If people have a problem with the film they will leave the theatre with only that scene at the end in their minds. And perhaps that may work in the films favour.
Also, the score is romantic and emotional as it should be but it is also very whimsical and unusual at times. Lots of fun, but distracting as well.
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Post by Penelope »

Thanks, Marco; I can't wait to see Atonement and compare opinions.
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Post by kaytodd »

Thanks for the review, Marco. I am happy that the scene between Briony and the French soldier made it into the film. That part of the book brought tears to my eyes. Very moving and well written.

Briony's wartime story, to me, was the most important part of the book. She goes through the greatest changes, realizes what she has done and prepares to pay her penance and "atone." If this is also the most important part of the film that can improve Garai's chances during awards season.

I am not surprised that you are so admiring of Macavoy's performance. Robbie endured so much. An actor like Macavoy should be able to do a lot with that character.
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Post by ITALIANO »

I've finally seen it. It's a good movie. Very good in some moments - the celebrated Dunkirk tracking shot is a piece of cinema of almost intoxicating, raw beauty - that alone should guarantee Joe Wright a Best Director nomination. It is extremely, almost reventially faithful to the novel - including a flashback with Robbie and Briony positioned right in the middle of the war scenes exactly as it was in book (there is a beautiful, poignant exception - a dreamlike scene, not in the novel, in which Robbie meets a character from his past during the chaos of Dunkirk). But Christopher Hampton's script is a good, though not especially imaginative, example of translating - and compressing - a big novel to the screen.

Is it great? Unfortunately, like the novel, no. For different reasons. While it quite well preserves the sense of regret, and sorrow, which was so pervasive in the book (and by the end it even becomes rather moving), it lacks - especially in the first part which, as I feared, is the less successful - scope, depth. The editing is perfect, but even too fast, too precise, and while the book was too slow in its beginning, the movie falls in the opposite trap - it doesn't allow its main characters to grow in front of our eyes, it just throws them in action after action. And young Briony is the character that mostly suffers from this mistake - her private world of misleading fantasy and adolescent torment is treated in a very plain, unmoving way - there's no magic to it, it's all about action-reaction. Everything is so quick that the viewer - conveniently - doesn't have much time to wonder about all the coincidences and contrivances which lead to a character's imprisonment. So it works for the movie, but not for its characters.

In the second part of the movie, luckily, those same characters gain depth, and while the movie never quite reaches the epic scale it aspires to, it becomes truly affecting - it finally breathes.

Will it win Best Picture? It's not the kind of movie which - as for example it happened to me and others with "The English Patient" or "Titanic" - you see it and you KNOW that it will get there - no matter which the other nominees will be. But it will certainly be nominated, and it could even win.

Of the actors, only one will be nominated even if the movie surprisingly failed to get a Best Picture nod: James McAvoy. His performance is extremely good - a beautifully written character which the actor makes real, human; a warm, empathic acting turn, which reminded me of some stars of the silent cinema: expressive in an unforced, natural way, and very engaging.
As for the rest of the cast - first of all, it is very good. All the roles, including the minor ones, are perfectly cast - I especially found the actors playing young Lola and Paul Marshall truly perfect. But who will be nominated? Keira Knightley is better than she's ever been as Cecilia (not that this means much, I know, but she is at least bearable here, doesn't pout too much, and, more important, is physically right for the role). Hers is an adequate performance, but, like in the novel, Cecilia is the less interesting of the leading characters, and in the second part she really doesn't have much screen time. Yet we know that she's the kind of actress that the Academy loves so, if the movie scores big and the Best Actress field is, as it often is lately, kind of weak, she will be in.
And then there's the third "big" character, Briony, played as we all know by three actresses. Forget about the child - no nomination for her. I liked Romola Garai - liked the sense of loneliness and almost frustratingly unexpressable sadness that this actress conveys - but with the possible exception of a beautiful scene - taken word by word from the novel - where she comforts a dying French soldier, she doesn't have the typical "showy" moment which usually leads to a nomination in this category.
And then there's Vanessa Redgrave. It's a VERY short appearence - shorter than I expected - the kind of cameo that in an "ordinary" movie would never be nominated. But it's all in close up, and of course this is Vanessa Redgrave, one of the greatest, and most respected, living actresses. And it's at the end of the movie, and the ending - while not as beautiful as in the novel, and definitely less complex - is still powerful - partly due to her brief but memorable monologue. She sums up the deepest meaning of the movie, and if the movie is REALLY much liked by the Academy, she will be among the final five.
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Post by Sabin »

Jeffrey Wells on 'Atonement'. I would bold the key comments but then it would be entirely black.


You can absolutely confirm and take to the bank all serious notions of Joe Wright's Atonement (Focus Features, 10.12) being a top-ranked Best Picture contender. It's a shatteringly well-made, deeply felt, rich-aroma romance that will go all the way with (almost all) critics, Academy voters and public alike.

Wright has totally pole-vaulted himself past the level of Pride and Prejudice (a well-made Jane Austen-er that I was only okay with) and taken costars Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and especially Vanessa Redgrave (a locked Best Supporting Actress contender) right along with him.

You can add Focus Features and everyone else associated with Atonement (young Irish actress Saoirse Ronanas, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designers Jacqueline Durran and Sarah Greenwood) as well. Everybody wins with this film, the audience first and foremost.

This is one of those bulls-eye period dramas that feels wonderfully sharp and literate and authentic with emotional tone-perfect performances, and yet the profundity of the payoff is in the way it combines cinematography, editing and sound effects (not to mention one of the most enjoyably splendid uncut Steadicam shots in cinema history -- the kind that warrants applause in and of itself) to create a sort of cinematic maelstrom effect.

Atonement leaves you with a sense of great regret and sadness (the feel-good kind) that amounts to something much deeper and fuller than what may be suggested by a casual reading of the plotline -- a tale about a woman writer crushed by profound guilt over a harmful thing she did as a youth, caused by foolishness that was amplified by sexual panic. Atonement taps into feelings of regret about all things, about how sadly transitional and here-today-gone-tomorrow so much of life is, and injects them into your system like it came from a syringe.

I'm sorry for having suspected that Variety's Derek Elley was perhaps being just a tad gung-ho-Britain in his Venice Film Festival review (he wasn't), I now feel that a piece I wrote two years ago about Knightley not having "it" is out of date (Atonement shows that she's found it and then some since, and without resorting to any of her old tricks) , and I'm sorry for having taken a cheap shot at McAvoy also. I've seen the light and am trying to make up as best I can.

Based upon an Ian McEwan novel published in '01, Wright’s incredibly well-configured adaptation may not entangle younger males as much as other demos, but it's an absolute slam dunk with mature viewers, couples and over-30 women.

It feels wrong to describe Atonement as a film with three acts, although it is that, because it doesn't feel defined by "acts" as much as the way Wright has cut it all together, and I mean with not only dazzle but ultra-fine precision. It replays or refrains certain scenes and does flash-forwards and flashbacks with impugnity, and never once does it feel gimmicky for doing so. It all fits together and hums like Swiss machinery.

I can write more about it down the road, including the plot particulars. I have to get to another screening, and I'm late as it is. There's no getting to even half of what you'd like to get to at this festival. So much of it is about curses and lost opportunities. I love it, of course.

I'm not saying Atonement is necessarily "the one" (I'm hardly in a position to say anything like that), but unless I'm crazy it will almost certainly end up as one of the five Best Picture nominees. And hail to the great Vanessa Redgrave once again. She's on-screen at the very end for maybe six or seven minutes (perhaps a touch more), and does nothing except talk to an off-screen interviewer, and she hits an absolute grand slam.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

It's amusing how all three trade papers have each singled out a different actor for praise. Screendaily says it's McAvoy who runs away with the film.

By the way, this is how you're supposed to write a review without giving away any significant spoilers.

Atonement
Allan Hunter in Venice
Screendaily


Dir: Joe Wright UK, 2007, 122 mins



Over the years, novelist Ian McEwan must have experienced all the mixed emotions of surrendering his work to the tender mercies of disparate filmmakers. He is unlikely to have cause for concern over Joe Wright's immaculate adaptation of Atonement.

This is a textbook example of literary adaptation; breathtakingly beautiful in its craftsmanship, impeccably acted and quietly devastating in its emotional impact. Worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) or The English Patient (1996), it combines an epic sweep with an intense, slow-burning intimacy.

Glowing reviews and strong word of mouth should ensure robust commercial returns as Atonement becomes the must-see prestige release of the autumn. It should also be considered the first front runner for across the board consideration among both Oscar and BAFTA voters.

The story of a doomed love affair shattered by the lies and false accusations of an impressionable young girl, Atonement begins on the hottest day of the year in 1935. Seamus McGarvey's gorgeous cinematography captures the dazzling white heat and stifling languor of a long ago summer. The soundtrack is punctuated by the insistent clatter of typewriter keys emphasising that this is firmly a tale all about storytelling.

In a massive country mansion, the precocious Briony (Ronan) has just completed her first play when she witnesses her sister Cecilia (Knightley) strip off and plunge into a water fountain. Cecilia is accompanied by handsome, housekeeper's son Robbie (McAvoy). Briony makes the first of several catastrophic misunderstandings. Later in the day she will accuse Robbie of a crime he did not commit. It is a day that will haunt all their lives with tragic consequences that ripple down the decades until Briony (Redgrave) is a repentant old woman.

Atonement has been adapted for the screen with immense sensitivity by Christopher Hampton. The complex, fractured narrative is handled with elegance and fluidity as it doubles back on itself to reveal a different perspective on key events and enhance our understanding of what has truly happened. It carries the weight and intelligence of the story with ease and Hampton's screenplay never jars in its evocation of the popular expressions and dialogue of the period.

The production design and cinematography transport us to worlds of privilege and suffering, climaxing in an extraordinarily rich and detailed section set on the beaches of Dunkirk that has a vaguely, Fellini-esque hallucinatory quality appropriate to the events that befall the wounded Robbie.

James McAvoy's Robbie is the eye-catching performance from a stunningly well cast film. Mastering a flawless upper crust English accent, he has the look and screen presence of a 1930s matinee idol like Laurence Olivier or Robert Donat, and rises to the challenge of this demanding role with a maturity and range that is mesmerising. McAvoy has shown a good deal of boyish charm in his previous work but Atonement is the film that confirms his status as a leading man and puts him in the frame as a potential Best Actor Oscar nominee.

Saoirse Ronan is memorable as the malicious, wounded young Briony, a role successfully reinterpreted by Romola Garai and then Vanessa Redgrave in a contribution that provides the dying grace notes to the whole film. Reunited with her Pride And Prejudice director, Keira Knightley responds with a strong performance revealing the inner steel beneath her cut-glass accent and Celia Johnson-style gentility.

Audiences accustomed to the fast-cutting frenzy of some modern filmmaking may find Atonement a little slow and measured but the storytelling is immensely compact and the pacing merely assists in the construction of an increasingly tragic and moving story. The entire film in approach and execution is a triumph for Joe Wright, and leaves you eagerly awaiting his promised version of Patrick Hamilton's Gaslight.
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Post by VanHelsing »

I also think that with its more Oscar-friendly date in December while getting buzz from all those film festivals in Oct/Nov, Atonement will be the one to look out for. Still, I'm rooting more for RR 'cause I prefer its cast and I can't stand the overrated Keira and her STRONG British accent. Sorry to all Keira's fans.
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Post by Penelope »

Sorry, Van, the trailer alone for Reservation Road makes me think it'll get middling reviews at best; Eastern Promises may get some good notices, but my gut is telling me they may not be as terrific as A History of Violence; and LustCaution, despite Ang Lee, is going to be a tough push for the conservative Academy (tho the directors branch could throw Lee a nom for artistic independence); Atonement is shaping up to be Focus' ace card this year. And I'm quite pleased by that.
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Post by VanHelsing »

Focus Features has FOUR films to push for Oscars this year:

Eastern Promises
Lust, Caution
Reservation Road
Atonement

At this point, not having seen all of the above, I hope they'll give Reservation Road the best push, not this film...
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Post by flipp525 »

Sonic Youth wrote:Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
Yes! Sounds like they nailed that tricky ending...

I am so excited about this film and ecstatic that it's being so enthusiastically received.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Ray Bennett is an even worse reviewer than Kirk Honeycutt, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. Check your calendar, folks: August 29th, 2007, the first official "lock".

Bennett has a very different opinion about Garai. Which one is right?

Atonement

By Ray Bennett
Aug 30, 2007
Hollywood Reporter



VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement," Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.

With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory [Umm... that won't necessarily be seen as a good thing to everyone.] and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.

Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.

Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. (Why-even-bother-seeing-the-movie?-type spoilers are hidden.)The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.

It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul (Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.

It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.

A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.

Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel.
Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.

The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.

Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.


Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Venice begins to speak.

Atonement
(U.K.-U.S.)
By DEREK ELLEY

A Universal Pictures Intl. (in U.K.)/Focus Features (in U.S.) release of a Universal Pictures presentation, in association with StudioCanal and Relativity Media, of a Working Title production. Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster. Executive producers, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Ian McEwan, Debra Hayward, Liza Chasin. Co-producer, Jane Frazer. Directed by Joe Wright. Screenplay, Christopher Hampton, from the 2001 novel by Ian McEwan.

Robbie Turner - James McAvoy
Cecilia Tallis - Keira Knightley
Briony, aged 18 - Romola Garai
Briony, age 13 - Saoirse Ronan
Older Briony - Vanessa Redgrave
Grace Turner - Brenda Blethyn
Lola Quincey - Juno Temple
Leon Tallis - Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall - Benedict Cumberbatch
Emily Tallis - Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire - Michelle Duncan
Sister Drummond - Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle - Daniel Mays
Danny Hardman - Alfie Allen

Rarely has a book sprung so vividly to life, but also worked so enthrallingly in pure movie terms, as "Atonement," a smart, dazzlingly upholstered version by young British helmer Joe Wright of Ian McEwan's celebrated 2001 novel. Period yarn, largely set in 1930s and 1940s England, about an adolescent outburst of spite that destroys two lives and crumples a third, preserves much of the novel's metaphysical depth and all of its emotional power. And as in Wright's "Pride & Prejudice," Keira Knightley delivers a star turn -- echoed by co-thesp James McAvoy -- that's every bit as magnetic as the divas of those classic mellers which pic consciously references. Released in Europe next month, and Stateside as a specialty item via Focus in December, this should reap good returns on the back of positive reviews and figure heavily in upcoming kudo derbies. It proved a popular opener of this year's Venice fest.

Though clearly by the same director, film is almost the polar opposite of Wright's debut. Where "P&P" took a relatively free hand in reworking Austen's classic in more youthful terms, "Atonement" is immensely faithful to McEwan's novel, with whole scenes and dialogue seemingly lifted straight from the page in Christopher Hampton's brisk adaptation.

And where "P&P" took a deliberately unstarchy, more realistic approach to Austen's universe, "Atonement" consciously evokes the acting conventions and romantic cliches of '30s/'40s melodramas -- from the cut-glass British accents, through Dario Marinelli's romantic, kinetic score, to the whole starchy period look.

It's a gamble that could easily have tilted over into farce. But as in "P&P," Wright's approach is redeemed by his cast and crew, with leads like Knightley, McAvoy and young Irish thesp Saoirse Ronan driving the movie on the performance side and technicians like d.p. Seamus McGarvey and designers Sarah Greenwood and Jacqueline Durran providing a richly decorated frame for their heightened playing.

Like the novel, pic plunges straight into the events of a hot summer's day in rural southeast England, 1935. As 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Ronan) hammers out "The End" on an amateur play to be performed at home, and strides through the family manse to present her masterpiece, pic succinctly sketches - exactly like the opening of "P&P" - not only the geography of the whole house but also most of the leading characters in a matter of a few minutes.

Bracing opening hardly pauses for breath as the first of the day's cumulative misunderstandings takes place. Briony watches from a bedroom window as her elegant but bored sister, Cecilia (Knightley), spontaneously strips down to her underwear and climbs into a pond to retrieve something for Robbie Turner (McAvoy). Robbie is the housekeeper's son who's been raised almost as part of the family but is forever several social notches below them.

Shocked at her sister's display of immodesty, and driven by confused child-adult emotions that are only clarified much later, Briony takes against Robbie, e ronetime friend. Hardly aware of the consequences, she exploits a stupid, shocking mistake by him later that day to blacken his name -- and then to separate him from Cecilia by linking him to a crime he never committed.

The consequences of her childish spite reverberate through the years. After coming out of jail, Robbie finds Cecilia, now separated (in disgust) from her family and working as a nurse in London. But it's a fleeting visit, as he's on his way to France to fight in WWII. By 1940, Robbie is one of thousands of soldiers in retreat and en route to Dunkirk, waiting for boats to ship them back to Blighty. In London, Cecilia still waits for him.

Meanwhile, Briony, now 18 (played by Romola Garai), is also working as a nurse, in an attempt to expiate the guilt she now feels -- as an adult -- about her actions that summer day. Briony's quest for atonement, for the chance of even a meeting with Robbie and Cecilia, fuels the pic's final, revelation-full 45 minutes, which packs one emotional punch after another.

Film's opening 50 minutes, entirely devoted to that single summer's day, is an immensely assured, rollercoaster ride of emotions, social manners and disguised class warfare, peppered with moments of stillness that capture the essence of the novel's detailed metaphysical background. Most cleverly, on two key occasions, Hampton's script comes up with a smart cinematic equivalent of the book's perpetual shuffling with time -- simply by replaying a scene, unannounced, from a different perspective and in more detail.

Like the performances themselves, pic is highly worked, a deliberate artifact. But its occasional technical trickery -- which reaches an apotheosis in the Dunkirk evacuation, captured in a jaw-dropping, four-minute steadicam shot worthy of Claude Lelouch in its human detail -- prepares the audience for the even larger structural and generic twists that make up the yarn's final third.

Where the movie disappoints is in not conveying the sheer enormity and petty viciousness of the "crime" that Briony commits - and the way in which all the family (apart from Cecilia) closes ranks against the once-favored outsider. Here, and in other parts of the movie, more breathing space would have helped: "Atonement" is one of those rare movies that feels too short rather than too long, and would have come home just comfortably at 135 or 140 minutes.

Also, by casting the charismatic Knightley in what is technically the book's subsidiary female role, Briony's character -- and her whole road to atonement -- is a tad shortchanged. Especially after Ronan's strong showing as the 13-year-old, Garai's rather dull, unconvincing perf as the adult Briony doesn't help to redress the balance: in her one scene opposite Knightley and McAvoy, Garai just doesn't hold the screen.

Other perfs are strong down the line, with vets like Vanessa Redgrave (as the older Briony), Brenda Blethyn (Robbie's working-class mom) and Harriet Walter (Briony's mom) in little more than cameos. Of the younger cast, both Juno Temple and Benedict Cumberbatch impress as Briony's sexually aware cousin and her brother's smug business friend.

But it's Knightley and McAvoy's film, both showing a star poise and physical elan that are most impressive. As the more controlled Cecilia, Knightley hints at the rebel behind the upper middle-class mask, while McAvoy shows a sheer emotional range that's completely new in his career. Like Irish thesp Ronan, the Scots actor also turns in an immaculate southern English accent.

Whole pic, including the French scenes, is convincingly shot around southern England, with a manse in Shropshire standing in just fine for the book's original Surrey setting. Curious decision not to shoot in widescreen almost seems to cramp McGarvey's graded visuals (bright, semi-pastelly summer to hard, colder wartime), and is a definite letdown in the Dunkirk section. Also strange is a caption announcing "four years later" for the Dunkirk material, when it's actually five.
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Post by Penelope »

Okri wrote:True.

And in other news, did Penelope know that Jeremie Renier is also in the movie (a small, cameo role, but still)....?
I did not know this. Well, then, we know right now that it's the best film ever in the history of cinema, don't we? :D
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Post by Okri »

True.

And in other news, did Penelope know that Jeremie Renier is also in the movie (a small, cameo role, but still)....?
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Post by ITALIANO »

Okri wrote:While I'm generally not all that impressed with Knightley, the role an emotional lynchpin of the story (you mentioned The English Patient, and it strikes me that Cecilia Tallis is very much like Katherine Clifton in terms of importance).
You are right - but in this case it'd mean that they have really shifted the focus from Briony to Cecilia (which, by the way, could be an understandable choice in movie terms): in the book - if one wanted to apply strict Oscar rules to characters in a novel, which is of course pointless - Briony is the leading character, Cecilia more or less a supporting one - at least based on the numbers of pages devoted to each character. Emotionally, I agree, Cecilia's character has a good potential. But then again, Katherine Clifton was played by Kristin Scott Thomas, which does make a difference.
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