September 13, 2012

Atonement (2007)

The story takes place in the 1930s and during the first years of the Second World War. The wealthy Tallis family live their somewhat dull lives on their countryside estate. One day the 13 years old younger daughter, with rather vivid imagination, witnesses a string of events that she thinks she understands and makes accusations, which has serious consequences and changes the whole family's life forever. 
It is difficult to write about this film as I haven't decided fully what my opinion about it is. Its way of telling the story is interesting. At the beginning we see the events through the eyes of Birony, the younger daughter and the way she interprets them. Then suddenly there is a jump back in time (a small one) and we see what actually happened. In the first part of the film these jumps are pretty frequent. I liked this and, if you think of it, there aren't many more options to tell such a story. 
The use of music was interesting as well. I don't remember if there were scenes with actual music in them (it doesn't mean that there weren't, of course), only that strange rapid clicking sound that made those scenes even heavier than those with complete silence. The role of music in movies is usually quite different, it serves to make the events lighter, and well, easier to cope with, so to say, for the viewer. The effect here was pretty much the opposite, I guess it was intentional. 
I think this lack of music might have had something to do with it, but I found some scenes a bit boring and too life-like. If that makes sense. All in all, it wasn't a bad movie, I think it is worth a watch, but don't expect anything happy, bright and sunshiny.

No comments:

Post a Comment