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Atonement
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Ian McEwan's 2001 "Atonement" is such a beautifully constructed novel, and so layered with meticulously observed detail, that it practically begs to be screwed up on film. But Joe Wright reimagines the novel with just the right amount of creativity and insight, intuiting what's cinematic, and romantic, about the story without crushing any of its delicacy. Wright dared to take on one of the most beloved novels of all time in 2005, with "Pride & Prejudice." The picture angered plenty of Austen purists, who seemed to see Wright as a low-class rube incapable of understanding the brilliance of the source material. Sometimes it seems book lovers want their favorite books to arrive on the screen DOA, simply so they have another excuse to revisit the worn-out argument that moviegoing can never be as good as reading. But it's probably an even bigger sin when a filmmaker delivers an adaptation of a great book that isn't boring.
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The Atonement of Christ is the sacrificial work of Jesus for sinners. In his death on the cross, Christ atoned for the sins of humanity such that God is satisfied and reconciliation is accomplished for all who will be redeemed. The obedience and death of Christ on behalf of sinners is the ground of redemption.
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"Atonement" begins in 1935 and stretches to the present day; it's a story about love that goes wrong and survives nonetheless. Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) is a well-educated young woman from a respectable family who can't quite sort out how she feels about Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the son of her family's housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn). Robbie and Cecilia have grown up together -- Cecilia's father has paid for Robbie's education, and Robbie now hopes to go on to medical school -- and Cecilia is having trouble deciding whether she feels great affection for him or if he simply annoys the hell out of her. The answer is neither: She's in love with him, a realization that dawns on her when she receives a typewritten love letter from him, one that took all his strength and courage to write.
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Joe Wright’s “Atonement” begins in the endlessly photogenic, thematically pregnant interwar period. The setting is a rambling old British country estate where trim dinner jackets and shimmering silk dresses are worn; cigarettes are smoked with sharp inhalations that create perfect concavities of cheekbone; and the air is thick with class tension and sexual anxiety. Heavy clouds are gathering on the geopolitical horizon, which lends a special poignancy to the domestic comings and goings. This charged, hardly unfamiliar atmosphere provides, in the first section of the film, some decent, suspenseful fun, a rush of incident and implication. Boxy cars rolling up the drive; whispers of scandal and family secrets; coitus interruptus in the library, all set to the implacable rhythm of typewriter keys. The film is not a bad literary adaptation; it is too handsomely shot and Britishly acted to warrant such strong condemnation.
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Bibliography: The more important treatises on the Atonement have been named in the body of the article. The history of the doctrine has been written with a fair degree of objectivity by Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die Christriche Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung, Tübingen, 1838; and with more subjectivity by Albrecht Ritschl in the first volume of his Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, 3d ed., Bonn, 1889, Eng. transl. from the first ed., 1870, A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, Edinburgh, 1872. Excellent historical sketches are given by G. Thomasius, in the second volume of his Christi Person und Werk, pp. 113 sqq., 3d ed., Leipsic, 1886, from the confessional, and by F. A. B. Nitsach, in his Lehrbuch den evangelischen Dogmatik, pp. 457 sqq., Freiburg, 1892, from the moral influence standpoint.
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Ultimately, "Atonement's" goal is so ephemeral that film may not be able to do the original complete justice. All that said, though, it's still a fantastic piece of craftsmanship, benefiting from loving direction and truly excellent source material, and if "Atonement" never quite lives up to the promise of the first half, it's not from lack of trying.
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Atonement