The world premiere of Joe Wright's film Atonement took place on the opening day of the 2007 Venice Film Festival. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan, grossed $ 130 million at the box office, won the British Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Picture and an Academy Award for Best Soundtrack.
England, 1935. The wealthy Tallis family spends the summer on a country estate. The youngest daughter, Thirteen-year-old Briony, impressionable and purposeful, dreams of a writing career and plans to stage her first play in the family circle. Adults are condescending to her, cousins do not take her seriously.
The eldest, Cecilia, languishes from the summer heat and first love. With Robbie Turner, the son of a servant, she shares a common childhood, studies at Cambridge and mutual attraction. Briony sees what is happening between them, is jealous and, because of his childish selfishness, believes that they are betraying her. Cecilia and Robbie are reckless, Briony is curious and overconfident. When their cousin is attacked, Briony's resentment and imagination are brewed for wrong conclusions, and the girl blames Robbie.
Cecilia leaves her parents' house, breaks off relations with her family, and with the outbreak of war becomes a sister of mercy in a military hospital. The war frees Robbie from prison, and he manages to see Cecilia before being sent to the front in France. By this time Briony is growing up, realizes her guilt, and inevitable remorse makes her look for her sister and Robbie in the hope of forgiveness. She punishes herself with hard work in the hospital, writes her first novel and letters to her sister, but Cecilia refuses to meet with her.
Cecilia lives in the hope of Robbie's return, Briony lives in the hope of redemption, Robbie tries to return to England to fulfill his promise to his beloved.
Atonement is a story of passion and jealousy, class prejudice, the consequences of curiosity and hasty decisions. About how dangerous ignorance and unwillingness to distinguish between reality and fiction, book romanticism and the tragedy of real human life can be.
And only in the finale, viewers will learn that the story told was true only at the very beginning. They learn that the girl who made a fatal mistake was never able to find redemption. The war took her last chance, and Cecilia and Robbie's life. Therefore, on the verge of her own death, Briony, who became, as she dreamed of, a writer, tried to bring her sister and her beloved back to life on the pages of a book in order to give the meeting and the happiness that she had deprived them of in reality.
