Atonement

Saw the film Atonement last week with Lisa and was glad I went.

Ian McEwan's books haven't yet made their way onto my (long) reading list but this film has gone some way to hopefully changing that.


It's not a Keira Knightley vehicle at all. Hers is a key role but just one of a trio of characters whose intertwining stories ask plenty of questions about the implications of telling (or not telling) the truth. Lisa grasped the intricacies of this discourse within the film better than me though!


The scene that won me over (see the picture above - I can't believe it was filmed on Redcar beach!) was Robbie Turner's (James McAvoy's) arrival at Dunkirk hoping for a swift escape from France back over the channel to England only to encounter thousands soldiers swamping the ruins of the town. The panoramic shot of the town is absolutely breathtaking - taking in all walks of life who fought in that war in all their ragged glory squeezing the last drops of pleasure from their painful lives - singing hymns in a male voice choir, riding dilapidated fairground carousels, drunken singalongs, card games, reading the last rites, it was a depiction of the human cost of war that moved me more than any of the overtly war-themed films that I've watched over the years.