atonement_ver6I received this little baby in my Valentine stash, so we decided to give it a whirl this Friday night. Umm, let’s see…where to begin? Maybe at the snore-ometer. You know, that’s the point in the movie my boyfriend seems to begin snoring. It was about 40 minutes into it, to be perfectly accurate. Had he been awake, I’m sure he might not have given it high marks. You figure, 7 award nominations? Wow, it must be great. Not entirely true. However, maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for their shenanigans tonight.

Writing a book…(small tangent, I promise)…writing a book, you learn that there has to be a reason of “care” in the first couple of pages. I have to write a character that someone is going to give two hoots as to what happens to them. Therefore, carrying your reader through the chapter, thus moving forward to the problem, the climax, and the happily ever after. Not so much care found here. I looked over (before he fell asleep) and remarked, “I don’t really care”. I was very detached from all the characters from the onset. It wasn’t until the last quarter of the movie that I began to care. It sort of came at the point they played a piece of music by Debussy. Que the swoon. Clair de lune is my all-time favorite. And the scene the music came from made entirely no sense at all. None. Period. It was thrown in there just to muster up some care, I felt.

And then there was the war scenes. Are you kidding me? I hate war scenes. Double hate, in fact. It’s depressing, makes me feel bad, and I know someone is not going to make it out alive. Hate, hate, hate the war scenes. I get exhausted and worked up just lying in my bed watching them!

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Perhaps I should’ve began my post with quick synopsis: (which by the way, is like the movie–the scenes are done in reverse) A girl sees her sister in a precarious position with a fellow she likes, and does something to change the fate of all their lives. And to make up for it, she writes a book in which she alters the ending in a way to atone for her behavior. A auto-biography, to be exact.

Maybe I just wasn’t feelin’ it. Maybe I needed some skittles. Seems we’re all out, and popcorn just isn’t the same without those fruity pieces in the bowl to counteract the salt. Or perhaps I’m older, and I don’t see the fun and entertainment in putting forth effort to make a tragedy. Did I like Romeo and Juliet? I thought I did. I found the romanticism in it all. Of course that was many years ago, but I could empathize. This movie I watched, although it claimed wildly romantic on the cover, fell completely short of the advertisement. There was no point. No point at all. It, in my opinion, was a whole bunch of hoopla to try and evoke a feeling of passion and despair, and it could have done so much more, had it had a happy ending. We really didn’t have to go there with the tragedy, now did we? The real world is packed with tragedy as it is.

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I had high hopes for this one. I really like Keira Knightley. I liked her in Begin Again, and I certainly loved her in Pride and Prejudice. Now that was a tidy romance. It made you bleed a bit for the injustice of love in the dark, but in the end, there was light!!! Where was my light in Atonement? Huh? Where was the light?

Cheated on a Friday night. Either way, I own it. Maybe I’ll let the dust settle of my first impression, plop it in a year from now, make sure I have a bag of skittles, and try it again. I might’ve missed something. 🙂 Yeah, I doubt it.

 

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