red road / atonement / sweet land

By chance, we've recently seen three movies that have atonement as one of their central themes. Atonement was the movie in the middle of the three and the only one we saw in a theatre. The other two were Red Road, and Sweet Land

All three were about class and the relation between, all three someone betrayed someone else for extreme personal reasons. But one stood out as a boring boondoggle. Can you guess which one. Yep the one with Keira Knightley in it.

We saw Atonement just after seeing Red Road, Atonement had to measure up to a pretty spare and tough movie. Atonement started well, with a precariously balanced world that gets wrecked by a mistake and a jealous little girl. The first part of the movie was good for me, it was tense and seeing the classes rub against each other reminded me of the best of PBS shows. For me, after Robbie gets carted off to jail (without a trial or the drama of it) the movie turned into a soap opera: the characters no longer controlled their fate or their lives, they didn't even do anything except pine for a bygone era. I was expecting some twist at some point, perhaps Cecilia shacks up with an American soldier, or she surreptitiously kills her little sister while London gets bombed by the Germans, or Robbie comes back and wants nothing to do with the Tallis family, but no, nothing happens after Robbie gets arrested, absolutely nothing. The movie might as well have had a quick epilogue at that point.

On the other hand by the middle of the other two movies things start getting going, in Red Road the protagonist starts to get into some serious trouble, and in Sweet Land the prejudice against the main character goes into full swing. The rest of the movie for these two main characters is how they deal with their demons (personal for Red Road, and community in Sweet Land).

That's all I'm going to say about these movies, I don't want to color your opinions of them. "Terry said they were good, but they sucked!" Whatever. Just get them: no skin off your Netflix account.

Note: if you are foreign language adverse, Red Road has subtitles, they speak English, but you still need subtitles, no really you do.