Atonement

Just been to see it at Uckfield cinema, which is a very nice small cinema, as long as you can cope with never knowing how loud the sound is going to be. It varies from ever so slightly too loud to a lot too loud. unlike most big cinemas where it's a lot too loud most of the time.

Spoiler alert, don't read the rest if you don't want to know how it ends...

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I decided in the end that I didn't like it. Very well made, very well acted, lots of good things and good scenes. I'm prepared to say it's a good movie, possibly even a great movie. But I didn't like it. That is to say I liked it right up to the end, but the end didn't do it for me. I gather from seeing what people who've read the book say, that the film gives a slightly different impression. Ian McEwen apparently says that the book is about the strength and weakness of authorial power. You can rewrite the past very effectively but you can't deal with the hurt you've caused that way.

The film, however, leaves it very unclear as to whether it's saying that or not. It lets the elderly Briony say that she hoped to atone for the damage she caused by rewriting the story so that Cecilia and Robbie live happily ever after "as an act of kindness". Now I was at that point furious with Briony for believing that she could do an act of kindness to two dead people by rewriting their story. But it's not clear that the film, as opposed to the book that I haven't read, intended me to think that. The film allowed her to say her piece in the context of an uncritical interview with some arts interviewer, and then validated it by showing, as the final scene, Cecilia and Robbie walking on the shore by the cottage that they never actually got to. And I found that most unlikeable.