Joe Wright is a terrible choice. Atonement was a great book that Wright did an OK job on - just about OK. The 'epic' post-battle beach scene was unbelievably badly executed.
Personally, I thought that scene was bloody marvellous. One of the best-directed scenes in modern cinema*. That alone would qualify him for Bond 23 in my eyes. The fact that the rest of Atonement was stunning merely cements it.
* Incidentally, the Observer called it "the single greatest shot in the history of British cinema."
To be honest, The Observer isn't cutting the mustered when it comes to being honest about lovee-fest british cinema.
For a more honest opinion on this see long running review websites, such as Chud.com:
"...Which makes it all that much weirder that I never connected with it on any emotional level. Atonement is a movie meant to send you into the theater lobby with puffy red eyes and tear stained cheeks, and technically it does everything it needs to do to get that reaction from you. But it's that technical proficiency that made it impossible for me to feel the film; I stand in awe of it, I admire the hell out of it, but it never touched me or resonated within me in any deep, meaningful way...."
"....In Atonement this beach scene might as well open with a title card: "And now for the tracking shot!" Which isn't to take away from the virtuosic artistry that went into bringing this complex and layered scene to life, but I found myself feeling like a punk rocker listening to ELO in the 70s - you have to admit this
is really, really well made, but what purpose does it serve other than to let you know how well they can make this
?"
writewords.org.uk (writer's community:
"....Joe Wright has gone one better in this extraordinarily bad film – he has managed to get all the wrong notes in the wrong order. When he sees what has been done to his book Ian McEwan must be spitting blood all the way to the bank.
Critical reaction to this film beggars belief. Bad is bad and pretending otherwise does not seem to me to do any worthwhile service to the British Film Industry or our genuine home-grown talent including that misused in this chocolate box of a movie.."
"....The scenes on the beach at Dunkirk and later in blitzed London are farcical in their clichéd imagery. Little cockney sparra speeches, arthritic old ladies pushing antique prams, a cockney kid who looked as if he needed to be taught how to skip etc .... .... There is hardly a scene in the movie where Wright denies himself a chocolate-box shot."
efilmcritic.com:
"....You see, before we arrive at Dunkirk, “Atonement” is an intimate affair. Its first act keeps a close eye on a wealthy family and those around them, focusing its beam on three main characters. As the story opens up beyond the family estate and into World War II, the focus remains entirely on these three characters. Then we get the tracking shot, which belongs in an epic of larger vision; as we watch the long, hard wait for evacuation by a seeming infinite number of soldiers and citizens, the camera glides along the war-torn beach, finds all these other people, peeks into their lives. Is it the movie opening itself up to a grander scope for its second half? Nope. After the tracking shot, we return to the intimate scale, and the rest of the film deals entirely with the three main characters, a close-up view of a constricted tale that just happens to be set against a larger backdrop.
Why, then, did we need to spend four minutes with thousands of soldiers whom we’ll never meet again, soldiers who have no real bearing on the story at all? Frankly, we don’t. The same “war is hell” message could be told in small-scale form. Director Wright, who peppers his movie with directorial flourishes throughout, is either confused about the intentions of his story, eager to call attention to himself by showing off his newfound love for flashy technique, or, more likely, both."
timeout.com:
"....The film’s later scenes are more pedestrian and Wright becomes more prone to visual swaggery: a technically impressive but artistically questionable five-minute tracking shot of the carnage at Dunkirk; the nurses marching in formation around a hospital as lights go off above them one-by-one; the rush of water through a tube station as a character drowns – all these grate as one feels that Wright, rather than tackling the pitfalls of storytelling instead succumbs to its audience-pleasing thrills."
...I could go on....
Edited by Odd Jobbies, 10 August 2009 - 10:54 AM.
