False witness

HOW OLD DO YOU HAVE TO BE to know the difference between right and wrong? The question will be asked aloud by one of the lovers whose destiny is decided by a 13-year-old girl, in director Joe Wright's brilliant adaptation of Ian McEwan's 2001 novel, Atonement. The answer may not be what Wright is searching for in his deft handling of the sudden discovery of love and its shattering derailment, but his depiction of its tragic after-effects will hit home for anyone who wishes they could go back in time and change one crucial act that adversely affected the fates of everyone involved.

The girl is Briony Tallis (Saorise Ronan), the youngest of three children in an upper-middle class family in 1935 England that has subsidized the education of their housekeeper's son, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). Briony's imagination has been harnessed into writing plays, and while she shows control freak tendencies when directing her visiting cousins in her latest production, her sexual self-awareness has yet to emerge. Her confusion is apparent when she secretly witnesses her sister Cecelia (Keira Knightley) disrobe in the yard in front of Robbie, then emerge soaking wet from a fountain.

Briony can only stare at him mutely when he later hands her a sealed envelope to give to Cecelia, who gets the note inside but not the envelope. An urgent score featuring the sound of typing accompanies her march towards an action she doesn't fully understand. Motivated by the provocative note and the witnessing of one more confusing encounter between Robbie and her sister, Briony willfully throws him under the bus when an opportunity arises. With one decision, she alters the direction of all three of their lives.

Wright, who directed Knightley in his acclaimed 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, seems like he's spinning a Rashomon-like, multiple-viewpoint melodrama of sexual awakening as Briony's perception gives way to the same events as experienced by Robbie and Cecelia. The director unravels the tragic plot points deftly, with all the cinematic subtlety required to translate the dense, descriptive prose of that characterizes the first part of the novel.

Despite a mostly straightforward script by Christopher Hampton, who previously did justice to Dangerous Liaisons and The Quiet American, the film actually transcends the novel at times, due in no small part to Seamus McGarvey's fluid camera work. McGarvey is instrumental in creating the subterfuge and foreshadowing that leads to the climax of the first part of the film and follows the intertwining fates of Robbie, Cecelia and Briony as the British evacuate France in World War II. The filmmakers create a stunning antithesis of Saving Private Ryan's invasion of Normandy, with a marathon, awe-inspiring continuous shot capturing the epic scope of thousands of defeated soldiers massing at the beach at Dunkirk and waiting to be picked up and shipped home.

McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland) gets to demonstrate the most range. His character's comic awkwardness gives way to smoldering passion at the discovery of his feelings for Cecelia. As a soldier, he's externally stoic as he leads to comrades to the evacuation while internally desperate as he holds on the hope of a future with Cecelia. Although Knightley gets less screen time, it seems like McEwan practically dreamed up Cecelia with her in mind, and she has enough chemistry with McAvoy to blow up a laboratory.

Wright and Hampton wisely retooled McEwan's conclusion with a reflexive twist the author could be excused for envying. There are no final answers, only more questions. How old do you have to be to take responsibility for actions that cause harm to other people? Is redemption worth seeking? Or, in the end, does it really depend on who gets to write the final draft?

Atonement

James McAvoy, Keira Knightly, Romola Garai. Directed by Joe Wright.