Score: 92/100
Score on a par with: The Last King of Scotland 92/100; The Cave of the Yellow Dog 87/100; Confetti 87/100; The Squid and the Whale 94/100; Good Night, And Good Luck 96/100; Corpse Bride 95/100; Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 96/100; Silver City 88/100; The Descent 93/100; The Breakfast Club 96/100; Pirates of the Caribbean 92/100; Pulp Fiction 91/100; Punch Drunk Love 86/100; Gosford Park 90/100; Bandits 87/100; The Others 88/100; Moulin Rouge 94/100; Unbreakable 89/100
This is quite an excellent adaptation of one of the best novels of recent years and remained pleasingly literary. It could easily have been reduced to little more than a hackneyed war romance, but as it stands it is a beautifully nuanced film about a novelist (Briony Tallis) coming to terms with the subjectivity of narration and, perhaps more than that, the belatedness of experience and the warping effect words have on reality. Kiera Knightly’s usual woodenness works in her favour with her character because she is a character falsely represented by Tallis, and with James McAvoy evokes Brief Encounter – all clipped vowels, diverted glances and Repression with a capital R. Knightly is not wooden here. She is repressed and two-dimensional. Really. It’s deliberate. If nothing else it’s a perfect piece of casting.
There are some faults with the film: the mass retreat through northern France to Dunkirk is filmed with a mass of about fifteen people, there is a scene featuring dead children which is almost absurd in its clumsy symbolism and the much-vaunted crowd scene at the beachhead at Dunkirk simply does not work (it looks like a film-set, utterly unreal). Of course, given that the story as we see it is Briony’s artificial creation it is possible to argue that these scenes are intended to remind the audience that they’re watching just such an artificial creation, but I’m not sure if that argument is entirely convincing or not. You’ll have to see the film and decide for yourself.
Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream I would have sons like these.
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