With this years most prestigious film awards ceremony taking place soon, I have finally managed to see all of the Best Film nominees. So, just how good are they?

An adaptation of Ian McEwan’s supposedly ‘unfilmable’ novel of the same name, one may be forgiven for imagining that Atonement is a film about war. However, although there are all the usual sequences of military hospitals and air raids, more fundamentally, Atonement is a film about guilt and responsibility. It follows the development of the relationship between Keira Knightly’s Cecilia Tallis and James McAvoy’s Robbie Turner (a childhood friend who works as a gardener on the estate), up until a pivotal central moment, during which their lives are irrevocably changed.

Despite the fact that Knightly and McAvoy get the majority of the screen time, the most important character in the story is Cecilia’s younger sister, Briony, who is very capably played by both Saoirse Ronan (young) and Ramola Garai (older). The film makes use of clever editing and selective repetition to convey Briony’s own perspective on the events leading to the fateful moment, as they unfold.

The second section of the film is split between Robbie’s life as a soldier in France and the lives of Cecilia and Briony, working as nurses in England. This section exhibits some of the film’s most striking cinematographic sequences, most notably the amazing (although admittedly not entirely essential) extended tracking shot along the beach at Dunkirk.

Atonement does have its flaws - most notably the film is necessarily fragmented making reflection on the film as a whole somewhat difficult. Nevertheless, Atonement’s quality is unmistakable. The performances from the four leads are all excellent and the cinematography, direction and screenplay are each of the highest standard. Crucially, the film handles its principle question and theme in an honest yet sensitive manner and ends in a way that is surprising and thought-provoking in equal measure.

Rating: 8.5/10

To see reviews of the other nominated films, please use the links below.

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