Read The Times reviews of Atonement

Brilliant? Boring? Pretentious? Atonement is the 'best film of the year', the 'best British film in ages', if you believe the press. But is it? Sunday Times Culture wants to know what you really think about Atonement. Don't be shy: post your comments at the foot of this review.

Never trust film critics who go to festivals: they are not normal people. They sit in dark rooms for long periods, watching film after film. The canaries in the coal mine of contemporary cinema, they emerge from the darkness singing the praises of the latest festival sensation. How would a film-festival virgin such as me know that? Because I’ve just seen Atonement, the big hit among the critics at the Venice film festival. Reading their reports, you would think that here was a great British film, one that belonged in the canon somewhere between Lawrence of Arabia and The English Patient. Ha! Don’t be fooled.

It’s one of those films that have impeccable literary credentials – based on Ian McEwan’s novel; screenplay by the theatre god Christopher Hampton – and it is directed by Joe Wright, who gave us the acclaimed recent version of Pride and Prejudice. Atonement oozes good taste, cultural refinement and what people call classiness. In fact, this is a snobbish, middlebrow drama. It’s the cinematic equivalent of Classic FM, yet it likes to think it’s Radio 3.

It’s often said that we are a nation obsessed with class. Actually, most people care very little about class in these days of celebrity-infatuation. But those who do will love Atonement. Their hearts will beat faster and their mouths will water when they see the beautiful country home of the Tallis family. Wright shoots, quite brilliantly, the lush, postimpressionist gardens, the preRaphaelite streams, the airy, cool sitting rooms, like a photo shoot for The World of Interiors. He also captures the malaise beneath the seductive surfaces of a way of life that is about to disappear.

It is 1935, the hottest day of the year. You can hear the sound of birdsong, the bat-squeak of repressed sexuality beneath the veneer of polite conversation. We first hear the manic clacking of 13-year-old Briony’s typewriter as she finishes her play. Played by Saoirse Ronan, she is a pale creature, with blue eyes that suggest one of the Children of the Damned. Mother (Harriet Walter) is up in her room having a migraine attack, while Briony’s sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) sits puffing away on cigarettes, as pale and cool as porcelain, waiting for the weekend guests to arrive.

Later that day, from her bedroom window, Briony watches an incident between Cecilia and Robbie (James McAvoy), who is the son of one of the staff, but has been brought up as one of the family. From Briony’s viewpoint, it looks as though he is sexually humiliating Cecilia. In the first of many scene replays, we are shown the whole episode from their point of view, and it is the innocent encounter of people in love, but afraid to show it.

That evening, Briony catches her sister and Robbie having sex in the library. Later, when one of the guests is sexually assaulted, Briony has Robbie framed. He ends up in prison; she ends up spending the rest of her life trying to atone for ruining his life and the couple’s love. Once you strip away the beautiful house, the posh people and the familiar theme of doomed love across the classes, what’s left but a rather small tale about one moment that has lifelong consequences?

Irritatingly, Atonement gives us the worst of two worlds stylistically: it exploits the taste and nostalgia for 1930s1940s Hollywood melodrama, yet it has an annoying postmodern knowingness to it. At its heart is a concern with the unreliability of narrative, be it that of a 13-year-old girl one hot summer’s day or that of British history. Thus, when Robbie, who chooses the army instead of prison, winds up at Dunkirk, waiting for evacuation, we see that episode in a different light. Instead of a heroic exodus, we get a nightmarish vision of horses being shot and men going crazy.

Exploring the theme of the unreliability of the narrator – postJohn Fowles, AS Byatt, Martin Amis et al – seems as dated and redundant as the country-house drama. But without the jumps in time and narrative tricks, the film would lack any kind of momentum or dramatic twists. And it loses its dramatic tension when, in the second half, the action moves to the bigger canvas of the war in France. What holds our attention so effectively is Briony as a child – her presence dominates the screen. The story involving the older Briony (Romola Garai) doesn’t have the same impact. It’s as if her character has been lost in contrition.

As a love story, Atonement also doesn’t work, for one obvious reason: it wants to be both a moving love story and a clever postmodern view of a love story, but the authenticity is smothered by stylistic artifice. Cecilia and Robbie aren’t lovers; they are lovers from a 1930s film. Their passion is killed because they’re covered in this big condom of quotation marks.

The best thing here is the confident and gripping performance by Ronan. Knightley is an intrinsic part of the pretty scenery, and does cold, pouty bitch perfectly. There’s a moment in a cafe when she pleads with Robbie – “Come back to me” – that shows she can do real passion. McAvoy has the right sad eyes for Robbie, but he never seems to hold the screen on his own.

15, 123 mins

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