Reviews

Atonement

Ripping through a recent round of failed World War II epics, Atonement comes out strong, a tightly scripted and executed handful of scenes with the wit of Wilde and the authenticity of Austen. The shots move quickly moving back and forth between the present and the near present ushering meaningful dialogue complete with implicit exchanges as well.  The story line follows Cecilia struggling to come to grips with her feelings for Robbie, played by James McAvoy who is less uncertain of his affections for the striking heiress portrayed by the very talented Keira Knightley. The story is complicated by the protrusion of the adolescent Briony, who although sharp is drawing erroneous conclusions of the two’s relationship- a simple enough mistake that comes to shape the future and development of these three characters.

            Without going to deeply into the plot, this dynamic greatly alters the course of the story and we are thrust suddenly several years into the future where we find Robbie, now a foot soldier in the British Expeditionary Forces wandering through the French countryside with what is left of his platoon. The quick, charging pace of the film comes to a pronounced halt. The scenes run much less cohesively while Cecilia and Robbie reunite from where the film transitioned several years back.

Director Joe Wright allows the two to share the screen via a sudden shift into the not so distant past and that just long enough to let a genuine connection blossom before he rips them apart again. The film quickly moves into one of the greatest uncut scenes in recent history, a modern cinematic masterpiece, a five and half minute scene that runs uncut in euphoric visual mastery. The backdrop of this scene is one of the most dramatic moments in World War II- the evacuation of the English forces from Dunkirk; a story well known in English lore though lesser so in the American conscious.

The Luftwaffe had the Allied forces surrounded after the stunning success of the Blitzkrieg subsequent victory in the Battle of Dunkirk and expected to annihilate them completely. An eleventh hour rescue operation was hatched by the British that entailed the use of every vessel in British ports that could float. World Cup winning yachts, pleasure crafts, tugs, fishing scrawls, cruise ships, and the like were employed with their owners at the helm in a momentous effort of bravery and brawn as the men charted the open waters with the Royal Air Force giving cover, but through land mine infested waters with the German assaulting relentlessly. The British and French forces converged on Dunkirk beach awaiting evacuation sabotaging their equipment while thousands of injured were laid along the beach where nurses tended to the wounded as best they were able. The operation, dubbed Operation Dynamo was a success and will forever stand as a seminal turning point in the war and a trophy of the human spirit as over 330,000 troops were rescued.

Robbie’s experience transpires apart from any knowledge of these events. He stumbles onto the camp which resembles something Biblical in its proportion, falling about through the ruins surrounding the beach at Dunkirk. The scene is eclipsed multiple times with the harrowing, eerie remains of a Ferris wheel that rotates in the background, slowly complimenting the scene’s pace which could best be expressed as a stupor. The pure existentialism of the shots is stunning, engaging, haunting. The shelling that rattles in the distance, the smoke raising from various propositional sites of wreckage, the despair of the soldiers, all work to illuminate this long shot aimed at embodying the horrors of war. The film’s score escorts this scene through sometimes difficult transitions while maintaining a unified experience.

The story then moves into almost a third film all together with a documentary style interview with an elderly woman who we learn is the now aged young Briony who has written these events in a novel titled ‘Atonement.’ This transition is so abrupt, so defined that it leaves the viewer holding the pieces of the film they thought they were watching. However, Wright’s authentic shift accomplishes its purpose relying heavily on an interview structured dialogue that plays back and forth with film’s score and Briony’s raw emotions.

The major flaw in Atonement is Wright’s lack of ability to weave the scenes together to form a cohesive whole. Though each of the film’s three major parts could stand alone as masterful short films, their collective expression fails to deliver the film’s intentions and ultimately prohibits it from achieving the measure of stature of it aspires to. Yet, the film works on a variety of levels with artful execution to produce a twist on the epic war love story.

           

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

 

An exceptional film by newcomer Andrew Dominick that brillaintly depicts midwestern culture in the late 19th century. The artful work of Dominick captures the movement of light and shadow with particular mastery in skyscapes and other natural shots. The camera illuminates the haunting echoes and half light particular to turn of the century housing. The open pasture scenes do the original Artist justice as a careful character study unfolds to the back drop of an equally mastered soundtrack composed by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. It’s careful development and movements fill out the narrative which accompanies the story line.

The narrative which for the most part works well is derived straight from the novel of the same name by Rob Hansen. The dialogue and subsequent scenes follow Jesse James and Robert Ford and ultimately the fatal interesection of the two. Ford, much younger than James joins the gang longing for fame only to learn the ugly reality of the storied outlaw and is soon drawn into a dillema of loyalties. There are no giveaways here as the film’s title implies- Ford ends up killing James only to find his act of heroism is not received as such in a society consumed with the worship of the anti-hero and awash in its own naive perceptions of the fabled murderer-James that is.

This movie joins the rank of classic western cinema with a brillaint performance by Casey Afleck as Robert Ford and a strong showing by Brad Pitt who has lost the purity of his portrayals since the days of Legends of The Fall or A River Runs Through It, though nonetheless captures James very well.

The film is poorly served by the thesis of the Hansen novel which seeks to portray Ford as a type of coward for assassinating a man who would be akin to a serial killer in modern times. Hansen insists this is the case because Ford felt threatened by him and acted only out of fear, but how that is not portrayed as a simple matter of survival is beyond comprehension and a stretch by any measure. The film follows the vain and sad days of Ford’s life as he is thrust into the limelight only to find what so many fame chasers have found also- that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is laced with poison. The commentary on the vanity of fame is welcome and always a timely moral tale. But the insistence on the cowardice of Ford and the comparison of the two’s fame leaves the film with more of a sizzle effect than a bang. The end that Hansen and in turn Dominick are aiming at is that James was a true American folk hero while Ford was just a poser. Thus, the film falls prey to the very sublime idiocy it depicts- the love of the anti-hero, a distasteful American icon and that to its shame. The one who adores this iconoclast suspects themselves clever for observing redeeming qualities in sociopaths or lesser villains. This stigma, this blight on American folk character falls back on itself and its bland attempt to capture the complexity distilled into humanity.

That flaw aside, that inordinate anti-hero affection syndrome, which to give Dominick credit, a healthy chunk of Americans suffer from, the film stands out as an excellent piece of cinema worthy of any collection.