Atonement

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 537: 08.22.22 I was coasting along in amazement at how much I was enjoying this one until the insane final fifteen minutes, which felt so foreign and disconnected it seemed like a prank on the audience. From Joe Wright, who helmed 2005's Austen adaptation Pride & Prejudice, this is definitely one of those chick-flick adjacent entries I likely would have never watched if it hadn't been selected by the G's of T.R. (GODS of TRUE RANDOM). It's all soft lighting, and melodramatics, and Kiera Knightley looking stunning yet waifish, and pristine period-piece reconstructions and costuming, and Cumberbatch, and child actor Saoirse Ronan, and the guy who got his dick chopped off on Game of Thrones... it's your mom's favorite movie of all-time (minus that last one). And I was ALL IN on this motherfucker. Don't ask me why. I can be a sucker for these bombastic ones from time to time. Even the absurd sequence which makes up the inciting incident was working for me.

James McAvoy is so pleased with himself when he finishes the dirty letter that sets things in motion...


For the most part, it's a big cheesy, over the top, years-spanning WWII / false rape accusation epic (the ultimate pairing of things movies can be about, imo). And it absolutely works. Until it doesn't.

The end just comes unhinged when a third iteration of Saoirse Ronan's characters pops up onscreen as an old lady in the present who has the exact same schoolgirl haircut (lol). After seeing them reunited, we learn that Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy actually both died horrible deaths, but also, what if they didn't? The ultimate "having your cake and eating it too" movie moment. It would be cheap if it wasn't so stupid. And, sure, this was based on a book so first blame needs to go there for this demented conclusion. But I digress. It's a good 90-minutes+ of legitimately good filmmaking. To say nothing of Wright's other work, which includes fellow literary adaptations Anna Karenina (2012) and last year's Cyrano, in addition to a Peter Pan originally story movie and the film which Gary Oldman won an Oscar for playing Winston Churchill, Atonement has let me know that the man can make a specific kind of mainstream drama very well. I doubt I'll be seeking out that other work anytime soon but one can do far worse with two hours of their time.

Also, I loved this advert that appeared on the back of a bus...


Also Also, I forgot to put the "True Random" theme song (a parody of "Blue Velvet" song by yours truly) at the front of the podcast recording. I'm not going to re-edit it. I'm so sorry. I vow to never let this happen again but it probably will.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 536 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 538 ⫸

---

Atonement is a 2007 romantic war drama film directed by Joe Wright and starring James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Saoirse Ronan, and Vanessa Redgrave. It is based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan. The film chronicles a crime and its consequences over the course of six decades, beginning in the 1930s. It was released on August 29, 2007.