Atone­ment

I real­ly mean it. If you are in the UK and “Atone­ment” is play­ing ANY­WHERE near you, run, do not walk. It is staggering.

Of course I adore James McAvoy, who would­n’t. He was spec­tac­u­lar in Nar­nia, in Last King of Scot­land, in the BBC tel­ly pro­gramme “Shame­less.” He was even won­der­ful in “Becom­ing Jane,” a sort of Jane Austen Lite. But in this film he is incan­des­cent. You can’t take your eyes off the screen. The man can act more with a lift of his eye­lids than most actors can with their entire bod­ies. Quite sim­ply the most com­pelling love scene ever in a film I’ve seen, and done so stun­ning­ly in a sort of post­mod­ern now-and-ear­li­er fash­ion, where you see the even­tu­al­i­ty from more than one point of view: breath­tak­ing. How any­one could come away from this film nev­er hav­ing been deeply in love, and sur­vive… I don’t know. I wish he had more chance to smile in any film: his smile is enchant­i­ng and wicked. Luck­i­ly I had my loy­al hus­band with me, who was sim­i­lar­ly (if not equal­ly) enthralled. A fab­u­lous film.

And the sound edit­ing! You can hear cig­a­rettes light, kiss­es hap­pen, drops of water fall. And the DP! Who­ev­er he is: the fall of gar­ments! And the art direc­tor: the bed­rooms full of 1930s clob­ber that puts you RIGHT in the scene. And the MUSIC. One Debussy strain will leave you weep­ing. Gor­geous. I’m still think­ing about it 10 hours lat­er, and plan to see it again.

You must see it. And when it comes to the US (don’t know when exact­ly) you must not say, “Well, it will come out on DVD.” No, the World War II scenes espe­cial­ly MUST be seen on the big screen. Do go. You will be cap­ti­vat­ed for 2 hours and 3 min­utes. Take tis­sues. You will need them.