Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Atonement 2
I see Atonement has picked up Bafta nominations to go with its Golden Globes. As I have said before, this is a terrible film. I have yet to meet an intelligent, discerning person who thinks it's any good at all; some have told me they laughed throughout. So who are these award judges? What are they for?
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Heaven knows I need atonement myself for my sins.
ReplyDeleteThey are there to keep ordinary cannon fodder, such as myself, in our places and to ensure that the directors of useless films are kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed. What could we possibly know about film, or any other branch of the arts?
ReplyDeleteThe only thing missing from the mess was a closing speech that mirrored Bogey's in Casablanca:
ReplyDelete"Cecilia, it doesn't take much to see that the problems of Nazism, democracy and the survival of the free world don't amount to a hill of beans beside that time we were rutting like rabbits in the library and were interrupted by your prissy little sister..."
I loved the book and I loved the film -- apart from the typewriter soundtrack, which I hated.
ReplyDelete(Cue vitriol for my unwise admission.)
I suppose you prefer standard movie fare like "Knocked Up".
Knocked Up? You bet.
ReplyDeleteBut tell me this, is the book (i.e. Atonement, not Knocked Up) any good? I can't be arsed to read it, having been crushingly disappointed by every McEwan I've attempted (and Chesil Beach, which I heard on the radio, is surely some kind of joke?).
We're real men, Petrona. Our tastes run to fare like "Knocked Up at Tobruk".
ReplyDeleteRead two of his books, one about some pointless murderer in Venice, then Enduring Love. Both technically proficient but cold, no soul. All his characters seem to be nice middle class types who live in London and go to soirees and read the TLS. Even his psychos read the TLS.
ReplyDeletei don't usually burn books but i make an exception for McEwan. He's probably a nice guy, even if he does look like he's into model railways and petting small boys and lizards, but i loathe his stuff. He's at the antithesis to Cormac McCarthy, a true killer if i ever read one, a man of steel and gnarled wood, a raider and a poet, a brutal savage and a great novelist. McEwan is just a clever geek who likes stroking lizards.
I haven't seen "Atonement" yet, but I want to. Yes, Nige, the book is excellent: It is my favorite of all McEwan's novels and he is one hell of a prose stylist. I also liked "Chesil Beach," though it's pretty much just a long short story -- not in the same category as "Atonement."
ReplyDeleteLike Elberry, I have not enjoyed many of his earlier novels: I, too, found them cold. Too cerebral, too quick to turn a serious subject into a clever joke ("Amsterdam"). But now I think he's showing his soul. He grows old, he grows old, and if he's not wearing his trousers rolled, at least he's putting his heart closer to his sleeve. (How's that for mixed/mangled cliches?)
The movie has gotten quite good reviews here in America, Bryan. Does it have bad ones in the UK? If it were really a bad movie, they'd be much more mixed: Movie critics in this country do not follow the herd.
My objection was that it wasn't a film of the book, it wasn't even a film about the book. It was a film that used the book for a lot of 'look at me, I'm a director' games. There was no sense in which the images served the story or the themes. It lacked inwardness.
ReplyDeleteThe film sounds like Michael Mann's Miami Vice film, or Malick's The New World - no core to give order to the technique.
ReplyDeleteIf McEwan allowed his true feelings to order his technique, all his books would be about a clever middle class London author who likes to sit at his window stroking lizards so passers-by can see. That's the basic theme of all his books, but he won't admit it.
Probably the same kind of judges that consistently denied Scorsese an oscar in favour of overrated mainstream films.
ReplyDelete"Read two of his books, one about some pointless murderer in Venice, then Enduring Love. Both technically proficient but cold, no soul."
ReplyDeleteI've not read the book, but i thought Enduring Love was a good film.
Enduring love was a terrible film! And a mediocre book.
ReplyDeleteElberry, I must admit that I don't enjoy McCarthy's writing, though I can see it's very clever. No Country for Old Men makes a great film though.
In anticipation of the Coen's adaptation i've watched the trailer about a dozen times and have taken to calling people "friendo". It helps that i look like Javier Bardem and have similar mannerisms.
ReplyDeleteCelebritish, I'm with you on the "Enduring Love" film. It was perhaps one of the worst movies I have ever seen, even though it had my favorite actor (BILL NIGHY!) in its cast. I forced my daughter to watch it with me (she owed me for her car insurance) and afterwards she said, "Of all the bad movies you have ever made me watch, this one is the worst. I hated every character in this movie except the baby: And that was only because the baby couldn't talk."
ReplyDeleteSadly, she was basically right!
God, Susan, you're like an evil stepmother from a fairytale. Can't you show your kids decent & sensitive films like Platoon and Die Hard?
ReplyDeleteLate, as usual, to the party -- I loved the book of Atonement, but you lot who mock and hated the film had better not bother, as the film is similar enough to the book as to guarantee you won't like it if you didn't like the film.
ReplyDeleteEnduring Love-- agree the film was rubbish, but being of the scientific fraternity, I rather liked the book, not least for the scientific communication aspects, though I agree the character of the creepy stalker was weak.
Yes, like Susan, I am the evil stepmother from hell, encouraging my young daughters to watch "Bourne Ultimatum" and "League of Gentlemen" (Sean Connery version) etc. Not that I have seen these myself, I do it in the educational spirit: I only watch movies if they have Viggo Mortensen in them or if they are based on books by Ian McEwan ;-)
This film was horrible. The worst I've seen in a while. I watched it all the way through because I kept thinking -this just has to get better if it got so many nominations... Nope it got worse and worse and then ended. I usually don't feel so passionate about terrible films, but this was so bad I'm actually angry.
ReplyDeleteI feel sorry for anyone involved in its production. To think of all the time and money wasted in its effort.