Atonement

Joe Wright’s 2007 film opens at an English country house in 1935, where thirteen year old Briony misreads what she sees between her sister Cecilia and the housekeeper’s son Robbie. Her statement sends him to prison and then to war; the last section reveals who wrote all of it. The long take on the beach at Dunkirk was shot on Steadicam by Peter Robertson. The production had 1,300 extras for a day or two; the shot was completed three times and a fourth attempt broke off partway. Seamus McGarvey put a black silk stocking behind the lens for the 1935 section and removed it for the 1940 section, overexposing slightly to deepen the blacks. Dario Marianelli scored it with typewriter keys struck as percussion, to blur the levels of truth in the story and suggest that what we watch may be a fiction inside a fiction. At the 80th Academy Awards it won one of seven nominations, Original Score, losing Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design; Wright was not nominated for directing. A good fit if you want the densest stretch of the film carried unbroken, the typewriter audible inside the music. Not for you if you are waiting for Briony to put it right; withholding that is the subject.