enduring love; A sweeping period romance, Ian McEwan's Atonement belongs on the big screen, while I'm Not There captures America's undying fascination with Bob Dylan.(Movie review)

Busy churning out blockbusters about boy wizards and superbad teens, Hollywood has almost stopped making old-style romantic epics. That's why I was so happy to see Atonement, the ambitious (and risky) adaptation of the celebrated best-seller by Ian McEwan. Leapfrogging from a thirties English estate to Nazi-occupied France to a BBC studio in present-day London, this is the most enthrallingly stylish tale of love and war since The English Patient.

The first half takes place in a Brideshead-style country house on a single, hot summer's day in 1935. The story begins when a fanciful thirteen-year-old, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), looks out a window and is horrified to see her sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), angrily strip to her undies and dive into a fountain in the presence of Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the housekeeper's overachieving son whom the Tallis family has sent away to university. Baffled by this mysterious scene, she becomes the key witness in an investigation that ruins Robbie's name, spoils her sister's chance for love, and sends tragic shock waves through the rest of their lives.

Atonement was directed by Pride & Prejudice's Joe Wright, who has an obvious gift for staging period pieces. He's at his best in this long country-house sequence, which gracefully explores the emotional crosscurrents-sexual tension, class consciousness, sibling rivalry-that suffuse these glamorous surroundings with an air of impending danger. Wright wins a scarily assured turn from Ronan, whose dreamy righteousness as Briony is quite unnerving, and helps McAvoy capture the inner battle between Robbie's bravado and his social vulnerability. As for Knightley, who's either Wright's muse or his Galatea, Atonement finds this constantly improving actress (she's only 22) playing a different kind of heroine. As bright and hard as an emerald in her ravishing green dress, her Cecilia exudes a brittle hauteur that finally can't mask a fiery spirit.

When World War II shatters the old world, its overwhelming scale knocks the whole film off-stride. Indeed, as the focus abruptly shifts to Robbie's experiences in war-torn France, the movie dips precipitously, all but losing the audience during what Wright clearly believes is his piece de resistance: an ostentatiously long and showy shot of the exhausted Robbie staggering around the Dunkirk beach with its glittering Ferris wheel, galloping horses, military choirs, and a teeming cast of thousands. Yet just when you worry that the story may grind to a halt, it starts to regain its bearings, heading back to Blitz-battered London, where eighteen-year-old Briony, now a nurse (and played by Romola Garai), seeks to make amends with her sister and Robbie.

In the end, Atonement builds to a heartbreaking encounter with the aged Briony (Vanessa Redgrave, radiant), who has grown up to become a famous novelist. As she talks of the ...