Atonement

Our DVD Price: £15.99 RRP: £19.99 Save £4.00 (20%)   Availability In Stock - should be despatched within 24 hours.  This product will be dispatched from Guernsey. Delivery times   Earn 75 Bonus Points when you buy this product. More info

Film Description

Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, Atonement is a Golden-Globe winning, Bafta-nominated epic love story set against the background of WWII. Lush, lavish and heartwrenching, this is filmmaking which recalls the drama of 1940s classic such as Brief Encounter, and the scale and scope of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago.

It begins in 1935 on the warmest day of the year at a country estate. The unsettling heat stokes 13-year-old Briony Tallis's imagination. When she observes the flirtation between a servant's son, Robbie, and her older sister, Cecilia, she childishly misconstrues it, and her misunderstanding leads to a terrible crime whose consequences follow them through World War II.

Having won Best Picture (Drama) at the 2008 Golden Globes, and after receiving a nomination for Best Film at this year's Baftas, this great British film is tipped for Oscar gold.

Film Information

Technical Details

Film Media

8 Stills

View Stills

1 Trailer

View - Medium (14.00 MB)

Reviews & Articles

Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review

Review by Peter Wild on 20th December 2007

Once upon a time, Ian McEwan was very much the bad boy of English letters. Yes he was one of our brightest hopes, yes he tended to get spoken about in the company of people like Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Kasuo Ishiguro and yes his books always sold very well – but still there lurked about McEwan the vague whiff of something bodily and unpleasant. As a young man, McEwan was writing amoral short stories about paedophiles loitering on canal banks and short novels about brothers and sisters having it away with one another. Whilst it’s true to say those days are pretty far behind him – McEwan is, these days, the very epitome of the literary establishment – he retains the ability to shock polite society and nowhere is this more in evidence that in Atonement, the no-doubt soon to be Oscar-winning adaptation of his best-selling novel.

Atonement is a big picture. Despite the intimacy of the love story at its centre (and the tricksiness of the conceit at its heart), Joe Wright’s Atonement is a film very much in the David Lean tradition. In the beginning what we have is a country house mystery: Bryony Tallis, a precocious young girl with aspirations to be a writer, spies a scene between her sister, Cecilia (an elegant Keira Knightley finally demonstrating her acting chops), and Robbie, the son of the local groundsman, and the blue touch paper is lit for misunderstanding on a grand scale – misunderstanding soundtracked rather deliciously by the snick of a typewriter to illustrate Briony’s fabulism in full tilt. There are shocks ahoy here – the C-word writ large and fumbled rape among them – but they are as nothing compared to the film’s disorientating and occasionally horrifying mid-section as Robbie, having been imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, finds himself reeling through the chaos of Dunkirk.

Concluding many years later, with Vanessa Redgrave offering a bravura turn as the septuagenarian Briony looking in some way to atone for the sins of her childhood, Atonement is a clever film that treats its audience with intelligence. Kudos to all involved but perhaps special mention to Christopher Hampton who adapted the book for the screen.

View more reviews by Peter Wild

Browse all Film Reviews

See Also...

Hand-picked recommendations of related films

Doctor Zhivago Dir: David Lean This adaptation of Pasternak's novel saw the historical epic in something like its final epic excess. Charting t... More >

Enduring Love Dir: Roger Michell An adaptation of Ian McEwan's unsettling novel in which a freak ballooning accident leads to Joe and Claire's li... More >

A Very Long Engagement Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Aka Un long dimanche de fiançailles. As World War I draws to an end, Mathilde has received word that her fiancé ... More >

Customers who bought this also bought...

Recommendations from fellow customers

The Lives of Others

by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

La Vie en Rose

by Olivier Dahan

Pans Labyrinth

by Guillermo del Toro

Breathless (Godard, 1959)

by Jean-Luc Godard

Control

by Anton Corbijn

Other films by...

More films directed by Joe Wright

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Atonement / Pride and Prejudice

View more >

More films starring Keira Knightley

Pure

by Gillies MacKinnon

Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl

by Gore Verbinski

Bend It Like Beckham

by Gurinder Chadha

The Jacket

by John Maybury

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

by Joe Wright

View more >

More films starring James McAvoy

Inside Im Dancing

by Damien O Donnell

Shakespeare Retold

by Various / TV

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

by Andrew Adamson

The Last King of Scotland

by Kevin Macdonald

Becoming Jane

by Julian Jarrold

View more >

More films starring Romola Garai

I Capture The Castle

by Tim Fywell

Inside Im Dancing

by Damien O Donnell

Vanity Fair (2004)

by Mira Nair

Amazing Grace

by Michael Apted

Atonement / Pride and Prejudice

by Joe Wright

View more >

For questions or assistance, call us on (+44) 0844 776 0900 or email on enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk

© 2004-2007 MovieMail, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. Find out more about MovieMail