Atonement

Many times an excellent book becomes an average film because a reader’s mind visualizes the setting, interacts with the characters, participates in the unfolding conflict, becomes entangled in the emotional engagement in a way that simply cannot be captured on film. Some stories have to be enjoyed intimately, one reader at a time, stories that can be seen only with one’s imagination. Atonement is such a story.

The film is not the story told by the author, it’s the interpretation of the story told by a screenwriter who accommodated the vision of the company that put up the money for the film. Atonement is an intensely personal story that does not translate well to the big screen, but it is too “big budget” to fit the small screen. The lush setting, the costumes, the massive war scenes have to be larger than life to work well for the film, but the intimacy of the story is lost in the process.

I know I’m not buying the finished product when my mind is more focused on not only how unhealthily thin the female lead (Keira Knightley) is, but also how incredibly flat-chested she is for being such a major “hot” movie star. The costumes she wore were meant to be sexy, but I found them odd choices for her body type, especially the green “sex” gown worn in the library. I was distracted by the male lead’s (James McAvoy) huge nose and wondered if the old wives' tale about nose size and male genitalia is true in his case. He also looked short in some scenes and taller in other scenes, which I found disquieting. The eyes of many of the actors were a startlingly blue color, which finally led me to consider whether they were true blue, contacts, or a process I could access through Adobe PhotoShop. The cigarettes had a major role in the film and stole some scenes from the actors who pretended to smoke them. I saw the overgrown fields of the country estate and wondered why someone didn’t either mow them or groom them. And each time the film cut between past and present, I contemplated turning off the DVD player and picking up a good book, rather than watching to the bitter end a film I was not enjoying.

Conversely, when I read the book, I stayed awake long past my bedtime because I didn’t want to close the covers until I finished reading. It was hard to find a good place to stop for the night, and my mind continued to live the story as I slept and dreamed about what would happen. I had high expectations for the film interpretation of the novel, but it appears that the filmmakers’ expectations were confined to big names, big budget, and big film.

Needless to say, Atonement goes on the “skipit” list.