A little word on Atonement and "instant classic"

I keep hearing the phrase 'instant classic' in reference to Joe Wright's newest feature Atonement. Yes it's ok, it's a pretty decent drama but 'instant classic'? Come on, isn't that praise a little too much, it ain't THAT good.

By Matt Holmes / September 4, 2007

The upcoming movie Atonement from Pride and Prejudice director Joe Wright is getting some incredible buzz from critics, the latest being Empire's glowing 5 star review of the film that went up recently on their site. The review is pretty much typical of what is being said about Atonement apart from one guy's review... MINE! Yes the movie is OK and there's a good story in there somewhere and yes at times it's masterfully shot and directed (although sometimes it gets a little gimmicky) but the words 'instant classic' that I've heard mentioned in the last few weeks? Not for me. To use the words 'instant classic' the movie needs Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio type acting and chemistry. Atonement's Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy do put in some good work but they aren't going to move you the way those two previously mentioned did on that ship ten years ago.

They produced good work... in a average film... which yes had some powerful scenes but they only ever worked in their own context and not as a whole. There is however one terrific and absolutely breathtaking sequence which deserves a mention and I think it's the scene that is pushing the movie to 5 stars. Here is what is being said about the scene, from the Empire review...

In one near-wordless, five-minute tracking shot on the beach at Dunkirk, as Robbies exhausted troopers stagger in to find not refuge but chaos, Wright stakes a claim to scene of the year. Vignettes - cavalrymen shooting horses to deny the advancing Germans, drunks draining the local bars - form a meticulous picture of the desperate straits of the Allies. Amid the booming artillery, scattered shipwrecks and soldiers searching for food and refuge, Wright keeps turning back to McAvoys face, as the best young British actor of our times reflects the weary horror of the day before the ships arrive. The sheer logistics of the shot are impressive, but its the emotion that makes this such an astonishing achievement. This is as effective a World War II beach scene as Saving Private Ryans opening, a fight for survival of a different kind.

I'm not exaggerating that it's one of the best things I've seen filmed in years (and those saying Children of Men's tracking scenes were incredible, they really need to see this) and will no doubt end up on our Greatest Scenes feature one day and is absolutely worth the ticket price alone but IT HAD NO REFERENCE POINT.

It feels out of place. It wasn't like the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the whole movie deserved it's sentimentality about war because it built it up in the first twenty minutes. This film did not do that. It just plonks a WW-II scene in there (and yes I understood the film and I got why it was there, but at the moment of the scene I didn't feel anything, so it fails) and it doesn't stir any emotion, and least not with me anyway. Terrific scene yes but it does not make the film an 'Instant classic', I'm afraid. Atonement is worth seeing but it doesn't have the caliber of acting, nor the script to make it anything more than an average love-absent war tale. A Very Long Engagement has all the themes present in this movie and it does it SOOOO much better from a storytelling point of view. Jeunet's movie is 3 times the movie Atonement is I'm afraid.