Atonement (2009)

  This was the Christy pick for January.  It was payback for me taking her to see Black Swan, pure and simple.  Did I deserve it?  Probably.  Would I do it again?  You bet your sweet black-feathered ass.

This is the kind of star-crossed tragic romance that is bread and butter for my cousin.  We all know that's not my bag, baby.  All I could think was "Who the fuck takes testimony from a ten-year-old?" and "Doesn't anybody do math in England?"

Allow me to illustrate:


Briony Tallis is a spoiled rich kid with a crush on the housekeeper's son, who's about 15 years older.  He happens to be more appropriately interested in Briony's sister Cecilia.  He's not supposed to be because of the class divide.  After an awkward moment in the fountain, he writes a note apologizing to Cecilia.  He also writes one describing sexual acts he would like to do to Cecilia.  Guess which note winds up in Briony's hands en route to the right sister?  So she thinks he's a sex maniac because he used the word "cunt" and then catches him and her sister fucking in the library.  Where this could easily have been a comedy of errors, it instead went all British.  Nobody addresses the issue at hand.

Two of Briony's red-headed cousins run away during dinner and everyone turns out for a search party.  During the search, Briony stumbles across her other red-headed cousin being sexually assaulted by a man in a black dinner jacket.  She immediately convinces the traumatized victim that it was the housekeeper's son and then swears to an affidavit, a binding legal document that he was the man she saw.

So now the cops are waiting for this guy, who was going to go to medical school, when he comes back with the two runaway brats.  They haul him off in cuffs.  He ends up having to join the enlisted ranks to get out of prison and gets sent to France in WWII.

Back to my questions:  who the fuck takes testimony from a ten-year-old?  In America, we'd have thrown that shit right out of court.  Or, at least, torn her apart on cross-examination.  And if you're going to allow the kid who has a history of writing fanciful stories to say stuff, why not get the testimony of the two red-headed kids?
That brings us to question #2.  If the red-headed kids were far enough away for the girl to be found, the cops to be called, and statements to be taken, how would he have had the time to molest her?  Is he a long-distance runner?  That seems like a case of simple math.

But the movie isn't concerned with any of that because then it wouldn't be called "Atonement", it would be called "Lying Girl Goes to Bed with Boxed Ears".  The movie wants you to believe that this one act completely ruined these people's lives and that, through the lens of time, Briony realizes that she has done something horrific and spends her life trying to make amends.

These are lies.

Not about the ruined lives part.  They got completely hosed.  But about the atonement.  She doesn't do shit the whole movie.  She never recants, she doesn't push for an appeal, she doesn't even bother to find out which unit he's in so she can write his commanding officer and at least let him know that the guy isn't some prison shitbag.  She becomes a nurse.  Whoop-de-fucking-do.  There weren't a lot of other jobs available for women at that time period.  And she still has a bad habit of making everything about her; her ward-supervisor has to tell her to stop giving the soldiers her first name since the nurses are supposed to be clinical and professional.

She's not remorseful; she's a Munchausen candidate.  Or a psychopath.  Too harsh?  You need more?  Okay.

After about a million jump cuts back and forth through the timeline (which was freakin' annoying, by the way; it's not the prequel to Memento), we see Briony in advanced age talking to some TV host about her 21st and final novel "Atonement".  Yeah, she went on to be a best-selling, prolific novelist.

What happened to her sister and boyfriend?  Did I mention the tragic star-crossed part?

So she finally tells the true story of what happened that night only after everyone who was involved is long dead.  And she admits that the only reason she did it is because her doctors have told her that her brain is turning to cottage cheese.  That's real fucking brave.  Way to take a stand for your principles.

Oh, but it's romantic.  I guess that makes it all better.