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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Almost the first sound we hear in Joe Wright's "Atonement" is the tap of typewriter keys. Soon, the tapping becomes regular, like drumbeats, and it sets the tempo for the music that comes surging in. Later in the film, it rings out as loudly as gunshots. The implication is clear: words can stir us and set us dancing, but they can also kill. That mysterious double power infused Ian McEwan's novel, published in 2001, and it lingers in Christopher Hampton's screenplay, which displays immense ingenuity in facing a basic conundrum: how do you film a story about language and not leave it reeking of books?
The first piece of literature we hear is a play by Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a thirteen-year-old girl--fair and blue-eyed, with a touch of the mad, bad fairy in her gaze. She is writing the play in an English country house in 1935, to be performed by her three unhappy cousins and, with any luck, to be watched by her older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), whose life seems as unconstricting as her long silk skirt and loose, translucent blouse. Also hanging around, with an undecided future, is Robbie (James McAvoy), the housekeeper's son, who was put through college by Briony's father, as an act of charity, and who became, to an undefined extent, part of the Tallis clan. "I told him to join us tonight," Briony's brother Leon (Patrick Kennedy) says. Note the verb: Robbie was ordered to dinner, not asked.
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