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Plot

In 1935 England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis is from a wealthy family set to perform a play she has written for an upcoming family gathering. Looking out of her bedroom window, she spies on her older sister, Cecilia, and the housekeeper's son, Robbie Turner, on whom Briony has a crush. Robbie accidentally breaks a vase and yells at Cecilia to stay where she is, so as to avoid cutting her feet on the broken pieces on the ground. Cecilia then strips off her outer clothing and climbs into a fountain basin to retrieve a piece. Briony misinterprets the scene as Robbie ordering her to undress and get in the water.

Robbie drafts a note to Cecilia to apologise for the incident. In one draft, designed only as a private joke, he confesses his sexual attraction to her and uses the explicit word "cunt". He then writes a more formal letter and gives it to Briony to deliver. Only afterwards does he realise he has given her the wrong letter. Briony reads the letter before giving it to Cecilia. Later, she describes it to her fifteen-year-old visiting cousin, Lola, who calls Robbie a "sex maniac". Paul Marshall, a visiting friend of Briony's older brother introduces himself to the visiting cousins and appears to be attracted to Lola. Before dinner, Robbie apologises for the obscene letter; but, to his surprise, Cecilia confesses her secret love for him. They proceed to make passionate love in the library. Briony walks in on them and thinks that Robbie is raping Cecilia.

At dinner, Lola's twin brothers go missing and a search is organised. During it, Briony sees Lola apparently being raped by a man, who flees upon being discovered. Lola and Briony talk and come to the conclusion that it was Robbie who assaulted her. Based on their testimony, and the explicit letter he wrote to Cecilia, he is arrested.

Four years later, during the Second World War, Robbie has been released from prison on the condition that he joins the army and fights in the Battle of France. Separated from his unit, he makes his way on foot to Dunkirk. He thinks back to six months earlier when he met Cecilia, now a nurse. Briony, now 18, has chosen to join Cecilia's old nursing unit at St Thomas' Hospital in London rather than go to the University of Cambridge. She writes to her sister, but Cecilia has not forgiven her for lying in the investigation years before. Robbie, who is falling gravely ill from an infected wound, finally arrives at the beaches of Dunkirk, where he waits to be evacuated.

Later, Briony, who now regrets implicating Robbie, learns from a newsreel that Paul Marshall, who now owns a factory supplying rations to the British army, is about to be married to Lola. Briony goes to the ceremony, and as the priest asks if anyone objects to the union, she realises that it was Paul who assaulted Lola. Briony goes to visit Cecilia to apologise directly. She is surprised to find her sister with Robbie, who is in London on leave. Briony apologises for her deceit, but Robbie is enraged that she has still not accepted responsibility for her actions. Cecilia calms him down and they ask Briony to try and correct the record and get Robbie's conviction overturned. Briony agrees but points out that Lola will not be able to testify against her husband, and that her own testimony will probably be viewed as unreliable.

Decades later, Briony is an elderly and a successful novelist, giving an interview about her latest book, an autobiographical novel, entitled Atonement. She confesses that the scene in the book describing her visit and apology to Cecilia and Robbie was entirely imaginary. Cecilia and Robbie were never reunited: Robbie died of septicaemia at Dunkirk on the morning of the day he was to be evacuated, and Cecilia died months later in the Balham tube station bombing during the Blitz. Briony hopes to give the two, in fiction, the happiness that she robbed them of in real life. The last scene shows an imagined, happily reunited Cecilia and Robbie staying in the house by the sea which they had intended to visit once they were reunited.

Cast

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Casting

For Wright, casting became a lengthy process, particularly choosing the right actors for his protagonists. Having previously worked together with Keira Knightley on Pride & Prejudice, Wright expressed his admiration for the actress, stating, “I think she’s a really extraordinary actress”. Particularly in reference to the character’s unlikeability, Wright commended her bravery in tackling this type of role without any fear of how the audience will receive this characterisation, stating “[…] It’s a character that’s not always likeable and I think so many young actors these days are terrified of being disliked at any given moment in case the audience doesn’t come and pay their box-office money to see them again. Keira is not afraid of that. She puts her craft first.” As opposed to casting McAvoy, “Knightley was in almost the opposite position—that of a sexy, beautiful movie star who, despite having worked steadily since she was seven, was widely underestimated as an actress.” In preparation for her role, Knightley watched films from the 1930s and 1940s, such as Brief Encounter and In Which We Serve, to study the "naturalism" of the performance that Wright wanted in Atonement.

On casting James McAvoy, who had refused previous offers to work with Wright, nonetheless remained the director's first choice. Producers met several actors for the role, including Jake Gyllenhaal, but McAvoy was the only one offered the part. He fitted Wright's bid for someone who "had the acting ability to take the audience with him on his personal and physical journey". McAvoy describes Robbie as one of the most difficult characters he has ever played, "because he's very straight-ahead". Further describing his casting process, Wright commented how “there is something undeniably charming about McAvoy.” On the most important quality which particularly resonated with Wright was “McAvoy's own working-class roots”, which McAvoy noted was something that Wright was very much interested in. Once Wright put both Knightley and McAvoy together, their “palpable sexual chemistry” immediately became apparent. The biggest risk Wright took in casting McAvoy was that “The real question was whether the five-foot-seven, slightly built, ghostly pale Scotsman had what it takes to be a true screen idol.”

In addition, the casting of Briony Tallis also proved challenging, yet once Wright discovered Saoirse Ronan, her involvement enabled Wright to finally commence filming. On the casting process for this particular role, Wright commented how, “We met many, many kids for that role. Then we were sent this tape of this little girl speaking in this perfect 1920s English accent. Immediately, she had this kind of intensity, dynamism, and willfulness.” After inviting Ronan to come to London to read for the part, Wright was not only surprised by her Irish accent, but immediately recognized her unique acting ability. Upon casting Ronan, Wright revealed how completing this final casting decision enabled “the film to be what it became” and considered her participation in the film “lucky."

Further casting processes included Romola Garai as an 18-year-old Briony, who was cast following Abbie Cornish's refusal, who backed out due to scheduling conflicts. She was obliged to adapt her performance's physicality to fit the appearance that had already been decided upon for Ronan and Redgrave. Garai spent much time with Ronan, watching footage of her to approximate the way the younger actress moved. Vanessa Redgrave became everyone's ideal to play the oldest Briony and was the first approached (although she was not cast until Ronan had been found), and committed herself to the role after just one meeting with Wright. She, Ronan and Garai worked together with a voice coach to keep the character's timbre in a familiar range throughout the film.

Production

Pre-Production

Liking to use the same creative team, Director Joe Wright asked executive producers, Debra Hayward, Liza Chasin, and co-producer Jane Frazer to collaborate a second time, after working on Pride and Prejudice in 2005. As well as, production designer Sarah Greenwood, editor Paul Tothill, with costume designer Jacqueline Durran and composer Dario Marianelli, who have all previously worked together with Wright. In an interview, Wright states, “It’s important for me to work with the same people. It makes me feel safe, and we kind of understand each other.”

To prepare for the film to authentically re-enact the WWII era, a historian was employed to work with the department heads to research and prepare for the time periods. The research involved the examining of paintings, photographs, films, and searched archives for inspiration to fit the story. The war scenes, like many others, were filmed on location in a seaside town. Set decorator, Katie Spencer and production designer, Sarah Greenwood, both visited archives from the Country Life in search of finding fit locations for their initial creative ideas for the interior and exterior scenes. Seamus McGarvey the cinematographer worked closely with Wright on the aesthetics of the visual storytelling of the film, implementing techniques and particular movement with the camera to achieve capturing the story to a high quality.

Filming

The film was produced by StudioCanal and filmed throughout the summer of 2006 in Great Britain.

Due to restrictions in the filming schedule which meant that production only had two full days to film all the needed scenes of the war front on Dunkirk beach, and the lack of budget to fund the 1000+ extras needed for the shooting of these scenes, Joe Wright and cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, were forced to reduce the shooting down into a 5½ minute long-take following James McAvoy’s character as he moved a quarter of a mile along the beach.

The first of the two days, and part of the second day, were dedicated to blocking and rehearsing the sequence until the sun was in the correct position in the afternoon ready to shoot. The shot took 3½ takes. The fourth was abandoned mid-flow due to the lighting becoming too bad for shooting. They ended up using the third take.

The sequence was accomplished by steady cam operator, Peter Robertson, moving from a tracking vehicle, to on foot, a rickshaw via a ramp and back to on foot.

Post-Production

In the post-production development, all departments of Atonement worked together in order to create a detailed and unified sound and editing process. Wright utilised the soundtrack as a key component to illustrate the narrative. The integration of moving image and the soundtrack along with the sound effects interact to focus the film on emphasising a strong, visceral formation that works on the instruments of filmmaking to the fullest. The coalition of the rhythm in the music, the editing, and acting all complement one another, to create a harmony of cinema and expanding on the passionate impression of scenes onto the audience.

Locations

Original film set, August 2006; Redcar's beach was the site of the Dunkirk beach sequence and stood in for Bray-Dunes

Seven Sisters cliffs and the coastguard cottages, South Downs National Park

These mainly were:

• Stokesay Court, Onibury, Shropshire
• The seafront in Redcar. This work included an acclaimed five-minute tracking shot of the seafront as a war-torn Dunkirk and a scene in the local cinema on the promenade.
• Dunkirk street scenes were shot at the Grimsby ice factory on Grimsby Docks, interior and exterior.
• Streatham Hill, London (for neighbouring Balham, Cecilia's new home after breaking with her family).

The other places across London were Great Scotland Yard and Bethnal Green Town Hall, the latter being used for a 1939 tea-house scene, as well as the church of St John's, Smith Square, Westminster for Lola's wedding. Re-enactment of the 1940 Balham station disaster took place in the former Piccadilly line station of Aldwych, closed since the 1990s.

War scenes (in the French countryside) were filmed in Coates and Gedney Drove End, Lincolnshire; Walpole St Andrew and Denver, Norfolk; and in Manea and Pymoor, Cambridgeshire.

Much of the St Thomas's hospital ward interior was filmed at Park Place, Berkshire and exterior at University College London.

All the exteriors and interiors of the Tallis family home were at Stokesay Court, selected from an old Country Life edition to tie in with the period and pool fountain of the novel. This mansion was built in 1889 commissioned by the glove manufacturer John Derby Allcroft. It remains an undivided family home.

The third portion of Atonement was entirely filmed at the BBC Television Centre, London. The beach with cliffs first shown on the postcard and later seen towards the end of the film was Cuckmere Haven Seven Sisters, Sussex (near Roedean School, which Cecilia was said to have attended).

Release

The film opened at the 2007 Venice International Film Festival, making Wright, at 35, the youngest director ever to be so honoured. . The film also opened at the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival. Atonement was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 7 September 2007, and in North America on 7 December 2007. Along with a worldwide theatrical distribution which was managed by Universal Pictures, with minor releases through other divisions on September 7 2007.

Box Office

The film grossed a cumulative $131,016,624 worldwide and in opening weekend in USA, $784,145, 9 December 2007 with a budget to make the film of $30,000,000 (estimated). A total gross of $23,934,714 (worldwide) and with the release in the US a total gross of $50,927,067.

Home Media

Atonement was released on DVD in the US on January 3rd 2008 in region 2, and followed a release in Blu-ray edition on 13 March 2012. The film followed a DVD release on February 4 2010 on Amazon in the UK and in Blu-ray with a release on 27 May 2010.

Reception

Critical Response

The film received positive reviews from film critics. The review site Rotten Tomatoes records that 83% of 196 critics gave the film positive reviews, with a consensus that "Atonement features strong performances, brilliant cinematography and a unique score. Featuring deft performances from James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, it's a successful adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel". On other review sites, Metacritic records an average score of 85%, based on 36 reviews.

In Britain, the film was listed as #3 on Empire's Top 25 Films of 2007. The American critic Roger Ebert gave it a four-star review, dubbing it "one of the year's best films, a certain best picture nominee." In the film review television program, At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, Richard Roeper gave the film "thumbs up" adding that Knightley gave "one of her best performances". As for the film, he commented that "Atonement has hints of greatness but it falls just short of Oscar contention". While the film received near-unanimous praise upon its release, in which particularly the film’s casting not only solidified Knightley as a leading star figure within British period dramas, whilst igniting McAvoy’s success in leading roles. Most importantly, it catapulted the trajectory or a young Saoirse Ronan. Upon its release, The Daily Telegraph’s David Gritten describes how “Critics who have seen Atonement have reacted with breathless superlatives, and its showing at Venice and subsequent release will almost certainly catapult Wright into the ranks of world-class film directors.”

However, not all reviews were as favourable. Although The Atlantic’s Christopher Orr praises Knightley’s performance as “strong” and McAvoy as “likeable and magnetic, he concludes by saying “Atonement is a film out of balance, nimble enough in its first half but oddly scattered and ungainly once it leaves the grounds of the Tallis estate” and remains “a workmanlike yet vaguely disappointing adaptation of a masterful novel.” The New York Times’ A.O.Scott comes to a similar conclusion, saying “Mr. McAvoy and Ms. Knightley sigh and swoon credibly enough, but they are stymied by the inertia of the filmmaking, and by the film’s failure to find a strong connection between the fates of the characters and the ideas and historical events that swirl around them.”

On a more positive note, The New York Observer’s Rex Reed considers Atonement his “favorite film of the year”, deeming it “everything a true lover of literature and movies could possibly hope for.”, and particularly singles out McAvoy as “the film’s star in an honest, heart-rending performance of strength and integrity that overcomes the romantic slush it might have been.” and praising Ronan as a “staggeringly assured youngster”, whilst being underwhelmed by a “serenely bland Keira Knightley” Adding to the film’s authentic adaptation, David Gritten once again notes how, “If Atonement feels like a triumph, it's a totally British one.” Particularly McAvoy is singled for his performance, which “His performance as Robbie Turner, the son of a housekeeper at a country estate, raised with ambitions but appallingly wronged, holds the movie together.”

Top ten lists

KEEP THE SAME

Accolades

Main article: List of accolades received by Atonement (film)

The film has received numerous awards and nominations, including seven Golden Globe nominations, more than any other film nominated at the 65th Golden Globe Awards, and winning two of the nominated Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture Drama. The film also received 14 BAFTA nominations for the 61st British Academy Film Awards including Best Film, Best British Film and Best Director, seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and the Evening Standard British Film Award for Technical Achievement in Cinematography, Production Design and Costume Design, earned by Seamus McGarvey, Sarah Greenwood and Jacqueline Durran, respectively. Atonement also ranks 442nd on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

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

Historical discrepancies

The film shows an Avro Lancaster bomber flying overhead in 1935, an aircraft whose first flight was not until 1941.

In the scene on the Dunkirk beach, Robbie is told that the Lancastria has been sunk, an event that actually happened two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuations. In the final scene, Briony states that the deadly flooding of Balham tube station, whilst it was being used as an overnight air-raid shelter, occurred on 15 October 1940; the flooding actually occurred before midnight, when the date was still 14 October.

During the scene in 1935 where Robbie writes and discards letters for Cecilia, he keeps playing a record of the love duet from Act 1 of La bohème, with Victoria de los Ángeles and Jussi Björling singing, which was not recorded until 1956.

Adaptation

The screenplay was adapted from Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel by Christopher Hampton and directed by Joe Wright.

After reading Ian McEwan’s book Atonement, Christopher Hampton, having adapted many scripts before, was inspired to adapt it into a feature film after his inability to put down the book led him to have the idea that the story could make a great film.

After Director Joe Wright took over the project, Hampton re-wrote much of the original script upon Wright's suggestion. The first draft took what Hampton called a more ‘conventional, literary approach,’ with a voice over and the epilogue of the older Briony being weaved in throughout the entire film instead of at the end.

Joe Wright decided he wanted to redo the screenplay when he was assigned as director for the adaptation. The second script was more similar to the book than the original and Joe Wright thought that the original approach put an emphasis on contemporary filmmaking rather than historical filmmaking.

The original screenplay was created with director Richard Eyre in mind as it had a linear structured plot with a traditional approach to it, however, when confronted with incorporating the theatrical element to it, he was not able to do so.

The film received many positive reviews about its representation to Ian McEwan’s novel with Variety reporting that the film ‘preserves much of the tome's metaphysical depth and all of its emotional power’ and noted that ‘Atonement is immensely faithful to McEwan's novel.’ Author Ian McEwan also worked as an executive producer on the film.

Influence

McEwan admitted that he was influenced by many literary forms for Atonement, including Jane Austen.

Christopher Hampton’s original influence of elderly Briony returning to the Tallis house came from his desire to occasionally incorporate the “voice of the old writer” in order to let the audience know of certain events happening in the passing of time, that could be “glimpsed occasionally like a ghost from the future”.