A Ton of Merde - SPOILERS AHEAD!
Written: Mar 16 '08 (Updated Mar 16 '08)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Beautifully photographed, with stunning sets and costumes and excellent performances by world-class actors.
Cons: Improbable plot that ultimately collapses under its own weight.
The Bottom Line: A major example of “Deus ex Machina: a person or thing (in drama) that is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty”
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| frebo3's Full Review: Atonement |
Atonement is plagued by erratic direction, unclear transitions, historical inaccuracy, and requires far too much suspension of disbelief to be enjoyable.
To summarize the plot:
(HERE COME THE SPOILERS!)
For his own amusement, an impoverished, horny and self-absorbed young social climber writes an obscene mash note to an attractive young woman of the upper class who has avoided contact with him for three years. He has no intention of ever allowing the woman to read the note – but carelessly allows it to be delivered to her. Reading the note, the young woman is overcome with passion – and upon their next encounter (in white tie and evening gown), they consummate their mutual sexual attraction on a bookshelf(!) and subsequently declare their undying love for each other.
The young woman’s teen aged sister – who has a crush on the young man - discovers the couple in flagrante delicto.
Later that night, a different teen aged girl is sexually assaulted. The teens, having read the obscene note, conspire to accuse the horny young man of the assault. They do so. He is imprisoned for four years, but released to serve in the British Army in time to be sent to France for the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Rather than the orderly and successful operation by a well-equipped and well-disciplined armed force documented by contemporaneous newsreels and military records, Dunkirk is depicted as a gathering of lost and despairing souls in a setting by Hieronymus Bosch. The young man dies of disease. The young woman dies in an air raid. The teen aged sister, a nursing student, cleans bedpans.
In a feeble attempt to right the wrong she committed, the surviving younger sister, in her dotage and suffering from progressive dementia, writes a fictionalized autobiography in which her elder sister and the horny young man survive the war and live happily ever after. They didn’t.
Act I offers a stunning depiction of the lifestyle of the landed gentry in England between the wars, circa 1935, and the unlikely declarations of love.
Act II depicts the forced separation of the young lovers – and the fantasy version of Dunkirk.
Act III offers a feeble resolution to the separation – akin to a typical soap opera “it was all a dream”, or in this case a writer’s fantasy.
All in all, a great disappointment.
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: None of the Above
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Rough cut, missing major effects, music, etc.
Worst Part of this Film: Ending
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Epinions.com ID:
frebo3
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Location: Texas, USA
Reviews written: 33
Trusted by: 5 members
About Me:
Socialism is the opiate of the intelligentsia
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