Pride and Prejudice; Atonement: 4 stars; 4.5 stars

There are few films where I can easily say are as beautiful as the old fashioned movies like David Lean’s films or William Wyler or Laurence Olivier. Joe Wright’s Atonement and Pride and Prejudice are two of them. Quite simply these films have some of the most artistic, majestic, and stylistic shots of any films that I have seen in the past two decades. Very few directors alive today can capture such beauty in EVERY shot, and somehow Joe Wright is one of these men who can.


I don’t know how he does it. I wish I knew how he can make every shot, every frame of these films worth looking at. And he fills it with drop-dead gorgeous landscapes and sets and performances (especially the landscapes).

Wright is a lover of long takes. In Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, these takes are the best ones in the film. They draw in the attention of the audience and empower the viewing of the scene with such weight. The one in Atonement lasted for almost five minutes and the scene would not have been as great if they continually cut all the time. I wish some directors would use this technique more.

The actors in both of these films are all top notch. Say what you will about whether they look like the characters they portray or if they don’t act the same way that they do in the books, but every one of them still gives to their respective roles such humanity. And all of them are British; what more could you ask for? (With the exception of Donald Sutherland which I can ignore for a moment because he is good.) Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Rosamund Pike, Brenda Blethyn, Tom Hollander, Judi Dench, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, Venessa Redgrave, and Benedict Cumberbatch all are superb and well cast, even if the majority of American audiences and viewers don’t know who these people are (which is sad).

And the music is amazing (for lack of a better word). The best way to describe the score for Atonement is how well it fits with the film. Both scores just works so well with the atmosphere of the film and really does work to convey what emotion you are supposed to be feeling and what these characters are feeling too.

Overall, if you haven’t seen these films, watch them. At least go a see Atonement. It really is a film that will stand the test of time as one of the greats in my opinion.