The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

In the 1930s English countryside, young Briony, an aspired writer with great imagination, just added the final touches to her first ever play. She waits for her cousins' arrival to stage it with them and show it to her family, including her older sister Cecilia, and house employees. However, she is mostly exited to show it to Robbie, the house gardener, for whom she has developed a crush on. Briony is unaware that Robbie's heart is already taken by Cecilia, who reciprocates the feelings. Their relationship successfully remains a secret to everyone until one day a particular incident crashes the peaceful days of the Tallis household and triggers a series of events that will leave consequent scars on the characters.The movie is a two-hour long flashback seen at most times from the point of view of Briony, that we see growing from a young, naïve and selfish 13-year-old girl, to a more mature young women, and finally to a wise but regretful old lady. Everything within the plot revolves around the mistakes Briony has committed when she was younger and how she needs to understand them and to cope with their consequences as an adult, taking her on a journey towards personal development. The purity of Robbie and Cecilia's love is also very touching. Moreover, the way the movie is filmed is esthetically breathtaking, with a lot of beautiful and complex shots such as the Dunkirk beach one take scene. If the original soundtrack of Atonement won an Oscar it is also for a reason. Indeed, the music fits extremely well with each scenes of the movie and truly brings it to life. Some very well composed tracks include one of the first of the film which is made using the noises of Robbie's typing machine, and the long track which accompanies him during the Dunkirk scene and manages to this scene all its power. Finally, what also truly makes this movie worthwhile is the final twist, along with the very emotionally packed final scene. Atonement is therefore a very well executed movie whose beauty and uniqueness rests on its narration, its twist and turns, its complex characters and their development, its breathtaking cinematography and its original soundtrack. I highly recommend this movie to everyone but beware of some hard topics that are evoked in it.

I was left with a bitter feeling at the end of this movie after hearing the elderly Briony Tallis (Vanessa Redgrave) explain to an interviewer how she manufactured the extended love story between her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and lover Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). Granted, and while putting things into perspective, young Briony (Saoirse Ronan) at the age of thirteen was not only mistaken in her accusation about Robbie, but was also in a bit of revenge mode after being rebuffed by him after the fountain 'drowning' incident. Her twenty first and final novel was meant to put to rest her conflicted heart over the matter of destroying two lives, but her means of 'atonement' at that point had no conciliatory effect on the way I felt about her character. Would that the relationship between Cecilia and Robbie have turned out the way it did following the war and it's aftermath, but it was all a fiction concocted by the troubled author. In a way, it's a story that never happened, at least as far as the latter half of the picture goes, so it left this viewer feeling as if he had been strung along. I don't think we had closure on chocolate heir Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Lola Quincey (Juno Temple) either, as their relationship further damned the future of Cecilia and Robbie as well. They could have come forward to contradict Briony's story when she was thirteen without jeopardizing their reputations, although to be fair, Lola was a kid at the time too and was certainly scared about what happened between her and Paul. So ultimately, all thoughts of a tragic love story between the principals was shattered by the end of the picture, leaving me with only a degree of measured contempt for the author who couldn't (or wouldn't) take responsibility when it mattered.

Just one defect is the movie is not fluent. Except this, I can tell that the movie was completely nice with the acting and the cast. I felt the tragedy deep inside. I believe that if a movie makes me feel any kind of feelings is the one tracer thing.

if it wasn't for the upcoming Dunkirk movie by Christopher Nolan, and if I didn't come the single-take shot, I probably would never see this film. I've never been interested in Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina or so-to-say pink novels adapted in film at all, although I did come across "The Soloist" by the same director, Joe Wright, which I liked but didn't have a lasting impact on me.It is difficult to review this particular title. It is absolutely not a war movie, at least in my view, the sheer lenght of the sentimental relationship between McAvoy and Knightley's character prevents it from being a romance, the specific premise to which things are set in motion doesn't let it being a class-conflict centered story, although subthemes constantly pop up. It is to note that the class-conflict aspect of the film is mostly very subtle, particularly in relation to how that event which acts as premise to the plot is being dealt with by the aristocratic family of Knightley's character. Certain aspects reminded me of stage drama tragedies. The title has much been criticized: how's the ending an Atonement at all? In my interpretation, it is a certain character's whole existence, with her being always thorn by the acts she did or omitted to do, that acts as a sort of "atonement", an attempt to somehow even out things between her and the other characters' relationships.I would like to keep the plot as much as under wraps. I'd like to point out that, until the last 10 minutes, I kept trying to ignore as much as possible an aspect of the plot I found idiotic (why a certain character didn't simply just withdraw its statement?). It was those final minutes that provided an explanation which simply brought back things to be logical. That said, the film is clever. Constant time-jumps and very subtle implications suggest some of the smartest portions of the plot. Don't expect Nolan-leveled complexity though. Technically, again, the photography is outstanding, in nearly the entire film. Certainly, the peak is the 5+ minutes Dunkirk single take sequence, but really it is needless and too long to list every single outstanding shot the film had.2008 was a year packed with too many good films that prevented Atonement from winning more Oscars. That said, Atonement deserves the acclaim it receives.