Wavering Tone

This weekend, I saw the movie Atonement. In fact, this was in the afternoon of the day it went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Picture Drama. To put it simply, it's not a bad movie. But it was not deserving of the award.

The longer answer is that, while I haven't seen many of the other films that were nominated in that category, I feel this movie had enough flaws that something else had to be better. (I could rattle off five movies from 2007 I enjoyed more, but few of those were nominated in any catgeory.)

Calling upon Eddie Izzard's stand-up (which I love to reference), this was a very "British" movie: a room with a view, and a staircase, and a pond. A movie where all the drama is subsumed, subdued, sub something. A movie with dialogue like:

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"What is it? I'm arranging matches."

"I... uh, think I'd better go."

"Yes, I think you'd better had."

The kind of movie you cannot eat popcorn to.

The movie was not devoid of emotion. The romance in the story evoked a real sense of passion. At other times, it evoked equally strong sadness. But the movie had some rough spots in between.

The main problem was that the movie felt cleaved in two, at the halfway point. The first hour felt like it was moving along, albeit at a leisurely pace. Then suddenly, you learn that everything you've seen was really just preamble for getting to the rest of the story... it was almost just exposition, and when viewed back through that lens, you couldn't help but think it could have been dealt with more quickly and concisely.

Oddly, the second half of the movie felt like it too was cleaved in two at the halfway point. The first half hour (that is, the "third quarter" of the film, if you're following me) was a stark depiction of warfare, centered on James McAvoy's character. This was problematic on two levels. The sudden focus on "what it means to be at war" felt like a jarring narrative mismatch to what had come before. And, more importantly, the film isn't truly about his character.

It's not about Kiera Knightley's character, either. The real center of the tale is a young girl (who grows up in the course of the film). And she drops out of that "third quarter" of the movie entirely, only to return for the final act. (And for the ultimate "point" of the film.)

Trying not to give many particulars away for anyone wanting to see the movie, I'll just say that there's a bit of an explanation at the end that tries to set straight why the movie "fills in" details about events not directly involving this real main character. But even if you accept it, you again have to ask the same question I found myself asking about the first half of the movie: given that this was only preamble, couldn't there have been a faster, better way to tell that chunk of the story?

In short, none of the movie is "bad." Much of the movie is emotional. And yet, once you've seen it all, only about a third of what you saw (excepting the final 30 minutes) feels like it's of actual importance to the story, like it really matters.

Before reckoning the final "grade" in all of this, I have to give some marks for a few good stylistic choices in the film. One is an interesting choice in the writing to have certain key scenes shown more than once, each time from a different perspective. It's fairly effective in conveying the mindsets of different characters in the moment, and at the end of the film, there's a final revelation that makes you consider these multiple points of view again. (Let's not call it a "twist ending" or anything cliché like that. Simply a "summing up" that better illuminates what you've been watching.)

Second is the musical score. The composer makes the interesting choice to use the sounds of a typewriter as a percussive instrument, and this instrument plays at key moments throughout the entire score. It's a very appropriate choice for the film, and results in a score not quite like any you tend to hear in these sorts of movies.

So... in the end, I give Atonement a B-. Which sums up what I've said. It's not a "bad" movie. Just not a movie of enough quality to merit major film awards, in my opinion.