Review Summary

Joe Wright’s “Atonement” begins in the endlessly photogenic, thematically pregnant interwar period. The setting is a rambling old British country estate where trim dinner jackets and shimmering silk dresses are worn; cigarettes are smoked with sharp inhalations that create perfect concavities of cheekbone; and the air is thick with class tension and sexual anxiety. Heavy clouds are gathering on the geopolitical horizon, which lends a special poignancy to the domestic comings and goings. This charged, hardly unfamiliar atmosphere provides, in the first section of the film, some decent, suspenseful fun, a rush of incident and implication. Boxy cars rolling up the drive; whispers of scandal and family secrets; coitus interruptus in the library, all set to the implacable rhythm of typewriter keys. The film is not a bad literary adaptation; it is too handsomely shot and Britishly acted to warrant such strong condemnation. “Atonement” is, instead, an almost classical example of how pointless, how diminishing, the transmutation of literature into film can be. — A. O. Scott, The New York Times