By Ben Pobjie
Midway through Atonement (SBS1, 9.30pm), there is, famously, a scene on the beach at Dunkirk in the Second World War, wherein a single tracking shot weaves, for five minutes, through the ranks of the Allied evacuees, smoothly spanning the blighted once-festive seafront, passing wounded and dying men, and letting the audience drink in a series of brief, touching vignettes: soldiers singing to brace their spirits; horses being shot; all the grim weariness of defeated troops struggling homeward. In that shot is contained so much of life: pain, despair, hope, regret, life and death. It's a bravura technical flourish by director Joe Wright, but it echoes the film as a whole, a tale that tracks young lives over the years to capture love and loss and regret and the beautiful tragedy of the world.
Fans of Ian McEwan's novel have been known to opine that Atonement the film fails to live up to the book's perfection. But considered independent of the source material, it is a work of gorgeous, poignant art. The movie begins in 1930s England, at a fine country house, where young Briony Tallis has seen something.
Impossibly refined and roguishly charming: Keira Knightley and James McAvoy in Atonement.
What she sees, how she misinterprets it, and the terrible deception that her misinterpretation leads her to, will change — or destroy — more than one life. The repercussions of Briony's decision will reverberate down the decades, scarring the future of those she loves and leaving her with a near-intolerable burden of guilt. Atonement is, from one angle, a love story — between Briony's sister Cecilia and the servant's son Robbie — but it is concerned with more complex and difficult human facets than simple romance. We are asked to muse on the ways in which mistakes made in youth can stick to us for the rest of our lives, the ways in which insignificant events can generate ripples that strike people with devastating impact. More than anything, we are faced with the question: how does one atone for the unforgivable? How can a person who has made everything go wrong, ever make it right again? Is atonement even possible? This is what Atonement presents to us, in the form of a graceful, sad, exquisitely shot period drama. Keira Knightley, impossibly refined, and James McAvoy, roguishly charming, strike marvellous sparks off each other — but both are outshone by 12-year-old Saoirse Ronan as young Briony, a performance of passion, confusion and heartbreak that has surely never been bettered in the history of child actors.
Further viewing: As Good As It Gets (Seven, 8.30pm) is a damn good movie, and it had to be with that title, or it was in for some really cruel reviews.
The Perfect Storm (Nine, 8.30pm) didn't live up to the name quite as well.
The Witches (9Go! 7.30pm) is the heart-warming tale of a young boy's battle to prevent evil witches from making Roald Dahl spin in his grave.