The plot of the movie revolves around two sisters, Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Bryony Tallis, from an upper-crust British family in the 1930s.  Both have feelings for the educated son of the housekeeper, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy).  Robbie has been treated well by Bryony and Cecilia's father, so much that his education was paid for by the Tallis family.  Though Robbie and Cecilia attended the same college, she barely spoke to him.  As Cecilia explains to Bryony, they moved in different circles.  This hot summer, though, having come into contact once more, their attraction becomes plain and they confess their love for each other. Later that evening, a terrible event occurs and Bryony tells a lie that changes all their lives.

The first half of the movie moves briskly, keeping pace with the clacking of a typewriterÕs keys.  Each scene seems finely staged, in perfect keeping with the setting of the mansion and grounds, as each actor is arranged precisely in relation to one another.  The uneven second half of the film follows each of the three main characters four years later.  Robbie, after Bryony's false testimony, has been released from prison in exchange for his service in the war in France.  Cecilia, estranged from her family, has become a nurse.  Bryony has followed her sister into nursing training, and has begun to realize the wrong she committed.  Suddenly the pace is slowed, and the characters seem lost in this sweep of their lives.  Nearly all the action becomes internal, so the movie proceeds with narrative slowly.  Cutting into the story with slowed-down flashbacks and imagined potential scenes, these devices at times seem ill-fitting to demonstrate the longing each character feels.  The actors lose some of their authority in the final half of the film without the contrasting energy of their fellows.

Even a five minute continuous shot along the beach at Dunkirk, which is remarkable and technically brilliant, seems to lack some emotion.  The camera pans along the soldiers abandoned on the beach, waiting for the ships to evacuate.  Robbie and two buddies walk intermittently through the long shot, as the camera weaves around the beach, into the canteen to show the drunks, past a choir and passes over hundreds of soldiers camped in their misery and loneliness.  With all this, the most alarming moment was seeing horses shot in the head, one after another down a line, to prevent the Germans from making use of them.

The performances aren't to blame.  Saoirse Ronan is fantastic as 13 year old Bryony, with her intense eyes exposing a child's sense of self-importance and betrayal as she watches her sister and Robbie interact.  Keira Knightley looks every moment the movie actress, always glamour and tragic angles, while James McAvoy shows us again how natural acting comes to him.  Romola Garai plays an older Bryony as she enters nurse's training.  Though a talented actress, her performance is eclipsed by her younger self.  Vanessa Redgrave makes an appearance as Bryony at the end of the movie.  

The human drama is beautiful to watch, but somehow doesn't penetrate.  Like the surface of a painting, the images are gripping, but the narrative as a whole seems treated with a certain coldness.  In the final scenes, Atonement probes the idea of whether art can be adequate compensation in the wake of real human tragedy.  This film, though striking, ultimately doesn't satisfy the need for justice, and solace, that it has created in the audience.