Atonement is a 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s critically acclaimed novel of the same name, directed by Joe Wright, and based on a screenplay by Christopher Hampton. It was produced by Working Title films and filmed throughout the summer of 2006 in Great Britain and France, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Distributed worldwide by Universal Studios, with minor releases through other divisions, the film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on September 7, 2007, and in North America on December 7, 2007.
The film comprises four parts, corresponding to the four parts of the novel. Some scenes are shown several times from different perspectives.
Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) is a 13-year-old aspiring writer from an upper-class English family and the youngest of three. Her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) is educated at Cambridge University alongside Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the son of their housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), whose school fees are currently paid by Cecilia’s father. Though Robbie is headed for medical school soon, he is currently spending the summer gardening on the Tallis estate. Their cousin, Lola Quincey (Juno Temple), age 15, and her younger twin brothers (Felix and Charlie von Simson) are currently visiting the family amidst their parents’ divorce. Lastly, Leon (Patrick Kennedy) – Briony and Cecilia’s brother – brings home a friend named Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch), who owns a chocolate factory that is acquiring a contract to produce army rations. The Tallis family is planning for a special dinner, to which Leon happily invites Robbie (who accepts, much to Cecilia’s annoyance).
That evening Briony encounters Cecilia and Robbie again; this time they are secluded in the library, where they are having sex for the first time. However the scared Briony misinterprets their lovemaking as another one of Robbie’s assaults against her sister. At dinner (where Robbie and Cecilia secretly caress hands under the table) the furious Briony is verbally aggressive towards Robbie but is cut off short when her mother (Harriet Walter) tells Briony to fetch the twins. Briony finds a note on their bed saying that they are running away back home and immediately the family members split up to search for the twins on the very large estate. As Briony goes off alone into the darkness to find them, she stumbles upon a tuxedoed man raping Lola. Though Lola – apparently traumatized – claims not to know who her attacker was (since he covered her eyes) Briony is able to convince her that it was Robbie. Back at the estate the police have been contacted. Briony insists that she “knows who did it”; that is, who raped Lola. Everyone now believes the attacker to be Robbie, while Cecilia strongly refuses to believe he is guilty. Robbie later returns from the search, with the twins safely in tow, and is arrested and sent to prison, based solely on Briony’s testimony.
The film finally shifts to an elderly Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) being interviewed about her latest novel, Atonement. During this interview, Briony reveals that she is dying of vascular dementia, and that this novel is her last, but that she began it first. Briony admits that, while the novel is autobiographical, the ending of the story has been significantly changed. In reality, she says, she never could summon the courage to see her sister and tell the truth. Robbie had died of septicemia on the last night of the evacuation at Dunkirk (1 June 1940), and Cecilia was drowned in October of 1940, in the Balham tube station disaster (October 14, 1940) during The Blitz. Briony expresses deep remorse and says that this novel, to which she gave an ending different from the reality, had been her chance to give her sister and Robbie the hope and the happiness that they had deserved—and that she had stolen from them. The novel is, therefore, her atonement for the naïve but destructive acts of a 13-year-old child, which she has always regretted.
The film closes with a scene of a simple, joyful moment that Cecilia and Robbie might have had, if things had played out differently. The background is taken from a postcard of an English cliff-side beach that Cecilia had once given to Robbie.