Atonement Review

Atonement is the story of a rich family and what happens (and follows) one night with a house full of guests when an imaginative young girl sees a series of events and jumps to conclusions, unaware of the havoc that will result from her error in judgement.

I had high hopes for this movie. Major elements are there. The cinematography and the sound is excellent. Something as simple as incorporating the tapping of an old typwriter's keys, the clickiing of shoe heels down the hall, the sound of a fan's blades into the tempo of the music makes it incredibly unique and interesting. The casting and even most of the acting was very good. The first half plants the story in so much rich soil, but it fails to grow from there. All it's potential falls flat when the story is left up to the premise of a passionate love story with only the foundation of a few minutes in a library that, without any background information, seems to be entirely about lust and cannot seem to have the roots to withstand a four yearseparation and a few more stolen moments.

I suppose there's only so much to be done when working from a book. As I have not read the book, I don't know how true to the story it is. Typically I'm of the belief that the book is nearly always better than the movie, but this is often because the movie isn't true to the original story. If this is a case of being true to the original, I have to say they may have done better to make some major alterations.