Atonement

Atonement

Over the weekend, the movie, Atonement, has mesmerized my mind and soul with a slight scent of late spring, and thus I felt indebted to write a review.

Throughout the movie, the scenes were beautifully crafted by Joe Wright, even the story line can be a bit cliché. You can figure it out after watching its commercial. The movie was originally written as a novel in 2001 by British writer, Ian McEwan and was featuring James McAvoy as Robbie and Keira Knightley as Cecilia.


Synopsis

It’s about a little girl, Briony, who once created a lie just like her fictions without knowing that it will ruin the lives and the love of her two most beloved ones. Later she regretfully attempts to undo and atone for what she has done wrong in the past through her novel but by then it’s too late and become rather self-serving. The movie depicts the conflict between Briony’s secretive but reckless crush and her sister, Cecilia’s conservative but sacrificing love toward Robbie.

At the very first peek, the movie looks a lot like Pearl Harbor or the likes of the other war movies, boosting up the patriotism justifying the war and the subsequent tragedy story.
But, in this movie, the background is rather England, and it exploited the war scene no more than what it has to: describing desperate situation for both lovers how much pain they had to carry on for one ridiculous deceit.

Dwelling in a beautiful mansion, Briony is typewriting aloud and swiftly to finish the play for her brother, Leon who is soon to visit. He is bringing his friend along, a chocolate millionaire, (don’t recall his movie name) who sells his chocolate candy bar to the Britain Army on the boarder.
Upon arrival of the very successful young businessman, Leon and his family want Cecilia to get hooked up but Cecilia rather wants to use him as a decoy to stir Robbie’s mind, the son of the housekeeper. Robbie, the housekeeper’s son, and Cecilia went to Cambridge together, both supported by “the old man”, the owner of the house and the father of Cecilia, and there they started liking each other although it was never revealed: the love able to overcome the difference statuses, though it usually goes vice versa.



Before the dinner with Leon and his guest, Robbie types a letter to apologize about an incident occurred around the pool earlier that he behaved a little strange to Cecilia.
After trashing a couple of versions, he happens to draft out a provocative version but it was rather playful to him as long as he keeps it to himself. No one knew it will ruin his promising life; he was all set to go to Oxford for his medical degree. After misplacing the lewd letter into his pocket, the bigger mistake was made when he thought Briony can deliver the letter to her sister, not knowing that she has been having a crush on him. She opens and reads the letter and finds it anatomically vulgar and explicitly seductive. That leads her to mistake Robbie for a pervert. She become more misconstruing after finding both Robbie and her sister, Cecilia, making love at the dark library after awhile. And her madness and jealous finally eats her up.



After a while, when the dinner gets interrupted by the sudden news of the missing twins, the entire family is all set out to find those two little brats, and there Briony comes across Lola, her cousin, being raped by an unknown attacker (turned out to be a chocolate millionaire), Lola, not knowing his face, acquiesces to Briony’s fictional imagination that the culprit is Robbie.
As a result of Briony’s accusation Robbie of a rapist, the innocent Robbie had to go to war after spending 3 years in prison to avoid the rest of the term. Cecilia joined the war nursery to share the burden with Robbie. Even their fate couldn’t stop their perpetual love. Following her sister’s footstep, Briony also gave up her Cambridge education and joined the nursery as a trainee. Briony coincides with Robbie when she visited her sister abruptly, and there she promised to write a letter to a judge in an effort to exonerate Robbie.

She only found out that it’s too late since Robbie has passed away during the war in France, a few hours before the evacuation and her sister, Cecilia, also has drowned to death at the bombing of the French subway by Nazi.



















Robbie’s beautiful note to Cecilia during the war

Dearest Cecilia,

The story can resume.
The one I had been planning on that evening walk.
I can become again the man who once crossed the surrey park at dusk, in my best suit, swaggering on the promise of life: the man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library.
The story can resume.
I will return, find you, love you, marry you and live without shame.


Music
Typing noise, resounding through the old mansion, rhythmically stimulates the nerves as the little playwright, Briony, runs down to her mom to show her play. The dark and sappy classical music seems adequately matched to the tone of the movie. Amid the album, my favorite was Clair de Lune by Debussy.
When the sun light fills the Cecilia’s room visually, this music fills the audience with late spring-like laziness and comfort.

The entire soundtrack is available online at
http://www.imeem.com/kpmeem/playlist/dk9y5GAl/atonement_soundtrack_music_playlist/

Also the guitar version of Debussy is available at
http://www.last.fm/music/Claude+Debussy/_/Clair+de+Lune


Wikipedia link of the actual novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(novel)