| Atonement | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Joe Wright |
| Screenplay by | Christopher Hampton |
| Based on | Atonement byIan McEwan |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Seamus McGarvey |
| Edited by | Paul Tothill |
| Music by | Dario Marianelli |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 123 minutes[3] |
| Countries | |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30 million[6] |
| Box office | $131 million[2] |
Atonement is a 2007romanticwartragedy film directed byJoe Wright and starringJames McAvoy,Keira Knightley,Saoirse Ronan,Romola Garai, andVanessa Redgrave. It is based onthe 2001 novel byIan McEwan. The film chronicles a crime and its consequences over six decades, beginning in the 1930s. It was produced forStudioCanal and filmed in England. Distributed in most of the world byUniversal Studios, it was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on 7 September 2007 and in North America exactly three months later on 7 December 2007.
Atonement opened both the 2007Vancouver International Film Festival and the64th Venice International Film Festival. Wright, at age 35, was the youngest director ever to open the Venice event. The film was a commercial success and earned a worldwide gross of approximately $129 million against a budget of $30 million. Critics praised its acting, emotional depth, Wright's direction,Dario Marianelli's score, the cinematography, editing, visuals, and the film's incorporation of historic events.
Amongnumerous accolades,Atonement was nominated in seven categories at the80th Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Supporting Actress (for Ronan),Best Adapted Screenplay, andBest Original Score, which it won.[7] It also garnered fourteen nominations at the61st British Academy Film Awards, winning bothBest Film andProduction Design; and won theGolden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama.[8]
In 1935England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis, the youngest daughter of the wealthy Tallis family, spies on her older sister, Cecilia, and thehousekeeper's son, Robbie Turner (with whom Briony is infatuated), from a window. During Cecilia's and Robbie's argument by the garden fountain, Robbie accidentally breaks a vase and yells at Cecilia to not move to not cut her feet. Still angered, Cecilia removes her dress, climbing into the fountain to retrieve one of the ceramic pieces. Briony misinterprets the relationship between them.
Robbie drafts Cecilia a note in apology. In one draft, he openly reveals his attraction to her graphically. He unintentionally places it (instead of the second more formal one) in an envelope which he has Briony deliver to Cecilia. She reads it before handing it to her sister. Later, Briony describes the note to her 15-year-old cousin Lola, who calls Robbie a "sex maniac".
Paul Marshall, a visiting friend of Briony and Cecilia's older brother Leon, introduces himself to the visiting cousins and appears attracted to Lola. Before dinner, Robbie and Cecilia are alone in the library, so he apologises for the obscene letter, but she confesses her love for him. They make love against the wall there as Briony walks in, who mistakenly thinks her sister is being raped.
During dinner, Lola's twin brothers go missing, so the household organises search parties. While seeking the boys, Briony comes across Lola being raped by a man who flees. Despite not seeing him clearly, Briony insists it was Robbie; a confused Lola who did not see his face does not dissent.
Later, Robbie, who has found the twins unharmed, brings them to the house. He is arrested for the rape despite Cecilia's pleas of his innocence. Lola and Briony's testimony, along with her turning over the explicit letter, convinces everyone but Cecilia of his guilt.
Four years later, during theSecond World War, Robbie is drafted from prison. Joining thearmy, he fights in theBattle of France. Separated from his unit, Robbie makes his way on foot toDunkirk. He thinks back to six months earlier when he met Cecilia, now a nurse.
Briony, now 18, joined Cecilia's old nursing unit atSt Thomas' Hospital in London rather than go to theUniversity of Cambridge. She writes to her sister, but Cecilia cannot forgive her for causing Robbie's arrest and conviction. He, gravely ill from an infected wound and hallucinating, arrives at the beaches of Dunkirk, where he awaitsevacuation.
Learning that Paul Marshall is about to marry Lola, Briony attends the wedding. Then she realises it was he who assaulted Lola and not Robbie. Briony visits Cecilia to ask forgiveness and suggests correcting her testimony, to which Cecilia says she would be an "unreliable witness". She is surprised to find Robbie staying with her sister while on leave.
Briony apologises for her deceit, but Robbie is enraged that she has not accepted responsibility for her actions. Cecilia calms him down, and he instructs Briony how to get his conviction overturned. Briony agrees. When Cecilia adds that she should include what she remembers of Danny Hardman, a worker on the Tallis estate, Briony points out that Paul Marshall was the rapist. Cecilia adds that, as he has just married Lola, she now could not testify against her husband.
Decades later Briony, an elderly and successful novelist, gives an interview aboutAtonement. The autobiographical novel is her latest and last book, as she is dying fromvascular dementia. She reveals that the portion of the book where Robbie and Cecilia are living together and Briony begs their forgiveness is fictitious.
In reality she could never atone for her mistake, and Cecilia and Robbie never reunited; Robbie died ofsepticaemia from his infected wound at Dunkirk, and Cecilia drowned months later during an underground flood in theBalham tube station bombing duringthe Blitz.
Briony admits that she wrote her novel with its fictitious ending to give the two, in fiction, the happiness they never had because she was responsible for wrongly identifying Robbie as Lola's rapist. The last scene shows an imagined Cecilia and Robbie happily staying together in the house by the sea which they had intended to visit once they were reunited.
In addition, film director and playwrightAnthony Minghella briefly appears as the television interviewer in the final scene. Minghella died six months after the film was released, aged 54, following cancer surgery.
DirectorJoe Wright asked executive producers,Debra Hayward,Liza Chasin, and co-producer Jane Frazer to collaborate a second time, after working onPride and Prejudice in 2005. He also sought out production designerSarah Greenwood, editor Paul Tothill, costume designerJacqueline Durran, and composerDario Marianelli, for the film—all of whom 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."[9] The screenplay was adapted fromIan McEwan's 2001 novel byChristopher Hampton.[10]
After reading McEwan's book, screenwriter Christopher Hampton,[11] who had previously undertaken many adaptations, was inspired to adapt it into a script for a feature film.[12] When Wright took over the project as director, he decided he wanted a different approach, and Hampton re-wrote much of his original script to Wright's suggestion. The first draft – written with the directorRichard Eyre in mind – took what Hampton called a more "conventional, literary approach", with a linear structure, and a voiceover and the epilogue of the older Briony being woven in throughout the entire film instead of only at the end. Wright felt that the original approach owed more to contemporary filmmaking than historical filmmaking, while the second script was closer to the book.[12][13]
To re-create the World War II setting, producers hired a historian to work with the department heads. Background research included the examination of paintings, photographs, and films, and the study of archives.[13] The war scenes, as well as many others scenes, were filmed on location. Set decoratorKatie Spencer and production designerSarah Greenwood both examined archives fromCountry Life to find suitable locations for the interior and exterior scenes.[13]Seamus McGarvey, the cinematographer, worked closely with Wright on the aesthetics of the visualisation, using a range of techniques and camera movements.
Casting the film was a lengthy process for Wright, particularly choosing the right actors for his protagonists. Having previously worked withKeira Knightley onPride & Prejudice (2005), he expressed his admiration for her, stating, "I think she's a really extraordinary actress".[14] Referencing her character's unlikeability, Wright commented on Knightley's 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."[14] 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."[15] In preparation for her role, Knightley watched films from the 1930s and 1940s, such asBrief Encounter andIn Which We Serve, to study the "naturalism" of the performance that Wright wanted inAtonement.[16]
James McAvoy, despite turning down previous offers to work with Wright, nonetheless remained the director's first choice. Producers met several actors for the role of Robbie, but McAvoy was the only one who was offered the part. He fit 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."[16] Further describing his casting process, Wright commented how "there is something undeniably charming about McAvoy".[17] One of the most important qualities that particularly resonated with Wright was "McAvoy's own working-class roots,"[17] which McAvoy noted was something that Wright was very much interested in. Once Wright put both Knightley and McAvoy together, their "palpable sexual chemistry"[15] 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."[15]
Casting the role of Briony Tallis also proved challenging, yet once Wright discoveredSaoirse Ronan her involvement enabled Wright to finally commence filming. On the casting process for the role of Briony, 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."[18] After inviting Ronan to come to London to read for the part, Wright was not only surprised by her Irish accent, but immediately recognised her unique acting ability.[18] 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."[19]
Abbie Cornish was pegged for the role of 18-year-old Briony,[20] but had to back out due to scheduling conflicts withElizabeth: The Golden Age.[21]Romola Garai was cast instead, and 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 and watched footage of her to approximate the way the younger actress moved.[16]Vanessa Redgrave became everyone's ideal to play the elderly Briony[16] and was the first approached (although she was not cast until Ronan had been found),[22] and committed herself to the role after just one meeting with Wright. Redgrave, Ronan, and Garai worked together with a voice coach to keep the character's timbre in a familiar range throughout the film.[16]
Produced byStudioCanal,Atonement was filmed in Great Britain during the summer of 2006.[23]
Due to restrictions in the filming schedule, the production only had two full days to film all the war scenes set onDunkirk beach and lacked the budget to fund the 1000+ extras needed to shoot these scenes.Joe Wright and cinematographerSeamus McGarvey were forced to reduce the shooting to a5+1⁄2-minute-long take followingJames 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 three complete takes, the fourth being abandoned mid-flow due to the lighting becoming too bad for shooting. They ended up using the third take. The sequence was accomplished bySteadicam operator Peter Robertson moving between using a tracking vehicle, to being on foot, to using a rickshaw via a ramp, and then back to on foot.[24][25]
The film includes a short clip fromLe Quai des brumes, a 1938 film byMarcel Carné.[26]
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Shooting locations forAtonement were primarily:
Additional locations used in London wereGreat Scotland Yard andBethnal Green Town Hall, the latter being used for a 1939 tea-house scene, as well as the church ofSt John's, Smith Square,Westminster for Lola's wedding. Re-enactment of the 1940Balham station disaster took place in the formerPiccadilly line station ofAldwych, which has been closed since the 1990s.
The war scenes in the French countryside were filmed inCoates andGedney Drove End, Lincolnshire;Walpole St Andrew andDenver, Norfolk; and inManea andPymoor, Cambridgeshire.
Much of the St Thomas's hospital ward interior scenes were filmed atPark Place, Berkshire and the exterior scenes were filmed atUniversity College London.[32]
All the exteriors and interiors of the Tallis family home were filmed at Stokesay Court, which was selected from an oldCountry Life edition to tie in with the period and pool fountain of the novel.[34] This mansion was built in 1889, commissioned by the glove manufacturerJohn Derby Allcroft. It remains an undivided private home.
The third portion ofAtonement was entirely filmed at theBBC Television Centre in London. The beach with cliffs first shown on the postcard and later seen towards the end of the film wasCuckmere HavenSeven Sisters, Sussex, which is 14 miles (22 km) fromRoedean School, which Cecilia was said to have attended.
The soundtrack was composed byDario Marianelli and played by theEnglish Chamber Orchestra with pianistJean-Yves Thibaudet and cellistCaroline Dale.[26] This was the second collaboration between Marianelli and Wright afterPride and Prejudice in 2005. Marianelli won anOscar and aGolden Globe for best film music. The music was nominated for other awards including theBAFTAs.[35] List of Nominations for The sound of a manual typewriter is also prominent on the soundtrack as are songs sung by soldiers; the love duet from Act 1 ofLa bohème,[36]Miss You sung byFlanagan and Allen, andClair de Lune (played byGordon Fergus-Thompson) also feature.[26]
Atonement opened at the 2007Venice International Film Festival, making Wright—at the age of 35—the youngest director ever to be so honoured.[37] The film also opened at the 2007Vancouver International Film Festival.[38]Atonement was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 7 September 2007, and in North America on 7 December 2007,[39] along with a worldwide theatrical distribution which was managed byUniversal Pictures, with minor releases through other divisions on 7 September 2007.[40]
Atonement was released onDVD in the United States on 3 January 2008, which was followed by a release inBlu-ray edition on 13 March 2012.[41] In the UK, the film was released on DVD on 4 February 2008, onAmazon (in the UK), and onBlu-ray on 27 May 2008.[42]
Atonement grossed a cumulative $131,016,624 worldwide and $784,145 in the US on its opening weekend—9 December 2007. The estimated budget for the film was $30,000,000.[43] The film's total gross revenue is $23,934,714 (worldwide) and $50,927,067 in the US.[44]
The review siteRotten Tomatoes records that 83% of 217 critics gaveAtonement positive reviews. The consensus reads, "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."[45] OnMetacritic the film holds an average score of 85 out of 100 based on 36 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[46]
In the UK, the film was listed as number three onEmpire's Top 25 Films of 2007. The American criticRoger Ebert gave it a four-star review, dubbing it "one of the year's best films, a certainbest picture nominee".[47] In the film review television programme,At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper,Richard Roeper gave the film a "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."[48] The film was praised by critics, with its casting solidifying Knightley as a leading star in British period dramas while igniting McAvoy's career in leading roles. It also catapulted the trajectory of a youngSaoirse Ronan.
The Daily Telegraph's David Gritten describes how "Critics who have seenAtonement have reacted with breathless superlatives, and its showing at Venice and [its] subsequent release will almost certainly catapult Wright into the ranks of world-class film directors."[49] The film received many positive reviews for its adherence to McEwan's novel, withVariety reporting that the film "preserves much of the tome's metaphysical depth and all of its emotional power", and commenting that "Atonement is immensely faithful to McEwan's novel."[50] Author Ian McEwan also worked as an executive producer on the film.[51]
Not all reviews were as favourable. AlthoughThe 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".[52]The New York Times's 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."[53]
On a more positive note,The New York Observer'sRex Reed considersAtonement his favourite film of the year deeming it "everything a true lover of literature and movies could possibly hope for", and singling out McAvoy stating "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", while being underwhelmed by a "serenely bland Keira Knightley".[54] Adding to the film's authentic adaptation, David Gritten once again notes how "IfAtonement feels like a triumph, it's a totally British one."[49] McAvoy is singled out: "His performance as Robbie Turner, the son of a housekeeper at a country estate, raised with ambitions but appallingly wronged, holds the movie together."[17]
The film appeared on many film critics' top ten lists for 2007.[55]
| Rank | Critic | Publication |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Kenneth Turan | Los Angeles Times |
| Lou Lumenick | New York Post | |
| 2nd | Peter Travers | Rolling Stone[56] |
| 3rd | N/a | Empire |
| 4th | Ann Hornaday | The Washington Post |
| Joe Morgenstern | The Wall Street Journal | |
| Richard Corliss | Time | |
| Roger Ebert | Chicago Sun-Times | |
| Tasha Robinson | The A.V. Club | |
| 7th | Nathan Rabin | The A.V. Club |
| 8th | James Berardinelli | ReelViews |
| Keith Phipps | The A.V. Club | |
| Stephen Holden | The New York Times | |
| 9th | Marjorie Baumgarten | The Austin Chronicle |
| 10th | Michael Sragow | The Baltimore Sun |
| Noel Murray | The A.V. Club |
Atonement received numerous awards and nominations, including sevenGolden Globe nominations—more than any other film nominated at the65th Golden Globe Awards[57][58]—and winning two Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture – Drama. The film also received 14BAFTA nominations for the61st British Academy Film Awards including Best Film, Best British Film, and Best Director,[59] sevenAcademy Award nominations, includingBest Picture,[60] and theEvening Standard British Film Award for technical achievement in cinematography, and awards for production design and costume design, earned bySeamus McGarvey,Sarah Greenwood andJacqueline Durran, respectively.Atonement ranks 442nd onEmpire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[61] In 2025, it was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition ofThe New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century", finishing at number 201.[62]
Atonement has been named among the Top 10 Films of 2007 by the Austin Film Critics Association,[63] theDallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association,New York Film Critics Online[64] and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.[65]
The green dress Cecilia wears during the love scene in the library garnered considerable interest.[66][67] At the ten-year anniversary of the film's American premiere, the film's costume designerJacqueline Durran called it "unforgettable".[68]
The film shows anAvro Lancaster bomber flying overhead in 1935, an aircraft which did not have its first flight until 1941.[69]
During the scene in 1935 in which Robbie writes and discards letters for Cecilia, he keeps playing arecord of the love duet from Act 1 ofLa bohème, withVictoria de los Ángeles andJussi Björling singing, which was not recorded until 1956.[70]
In the scene on the Dunkirk beach, Robbie is told that theLancastria has been sunk, an event that actually happened two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuations.[71]
The song "White Cliffs of Dover" was not penned until 1941.
A detail reported as a historical inaccuracy[citation needed] is the date of theBalham tube station disaster. It happened before midnight on 14 October 1940. Old Briony mentions 15 October as the date, which would have been the day the news of the deadly flooding broke.
Many details in the long sequences set at Dunkirk, especially the Ferris wheel by the beach with soldiers going round on the wheel, and the events in the beachside cinema, are hallucinations in the mind of the man dying from his infected wounds. Historically the beaches used during the Dunkirk evacuation were empty sand dunes (the place-name means church in the dune) near the bombed jetty.
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