FESTIVAL REVIEW
What does it mean to forgive someone for an act whose consequences can never be undone? For the person responsible, forgiveness may represent the hope that the worst thing they have done does not have to define the rest of their life. For the people affected, however, the answer is far more complicated. Atonement explores that dynamic between guilt and grief through an Iraq War veteran who seeks out the family whose lives he shattered years earlier, hoping there is still some way to make amends.
During the early days of the Iraq War, Marine Lou D’Alessandro (Boyd Holbrook), caught in the confusion of a firefight, opens fire on the cars of an Iraqi family trying to return home after they fail to respond to warnings, killing three members of the family and leaving Mariam Khachaturian (Hiam Abbass) and her surviving relatives to live with the trauma. Years later, now suffering from PTSD and consumed by regret, Lou searches for them and, with the help of journalist Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh), arranges a meeting where both he and the family are forced to revisit the most painful moment of their lives, in the hope that they can finally find some way to move forward from it.
BACKGROUND
Atonement marks the feature debut of Reed Van Dyk, who was deeply moved when he first read Dexter Filkins’ New Yorker article in 2012, particularly by where the story eventually led. After a few successful shorts, he was able to secure the rights and meet with both Filkins and the real Marine behind Lou, but he became especially close to the Iraqi family, who lived only about twenty minutes from him in Los Angeles. He spent years talking with them and earning their blessing to tell the story, while also traveling to Baghdad and studying Abbas Fahdel’s six-hour documentary Homeland: Iraq Year Zero as part of his effort to better understand the Iraqi side of the experience.
THE REVIEW
It is rare for an American war film to spend this much time looking at the people on the other side of the gun, and in that sense, Atonement captures guilt and trauma with far more honesty than something like American Sniper. It is still, however, fundamentally an American film. For all of Van Dyk’s noble intentions and the effort he makes to understand the Iraqi perspective, the family remains secondary to Lou’s story, even though they are the ones far more deeply affected by what happened.
Unsurprisingly, the film is at its best whenever the family becomes the center of attention, beginning with an opening stretch that follows what could have been an ordinary day until it turns into catastrophe. The film’s only major war sequence focuses largely on their confusion as, within minutes, three members of the family are killed. The Americans are seen mostly from a distance, almost as one-dimensional villains who keep firing even though nobody is shooting back. It is an effective and disturbing approach that lingers through the rest of the film, both as a depiction of the horror experienced by the family and through the images that continue to haunt Lou years later.
When the film jumps forward, Lou has become a broken man, haunted by the trauma even in his most intimate moments. Van Dyk never directly confronts the American government or the larger machinery that created victims on both sides, but he leaves enough to suggest the manipulation and conditioning that helped push Lou and the other soldiers toward firing in the first place. Once that is established, the film largely puts the causes of the war aside and turns toward Lou’s attempt to heal. Boyd Holbrook brings considerable intensity to the role, capturing the depression and guilt of someone unable to escape what he did, while making his best effort to earn our sympathy for what is ultimately the least interesting part of the story.
Far more interesting is Kenneth Branagh’s Michael Reid, the journalist who witnessed the war, reported on the incident, and eventually became the bridge between Lou and the family. His presence adds an uncomfortable wrinkle to the film’s ideas about responsibility, because even while helping these Iraqi civilians tell their story, Reid is still a journalist looking for a story worth publishing, and perhaps for the recognition that comes with it. The film makes that clear when he quickly refuses Lou’s request to collaborate on the piece, showing the boundaries of his empathy. Even sharper is the scene in which he almost casually admits he barely remembers what happened during the war, dismissively noting it as something that happened ten years ago while sitting across from people whose lives were destroyed by those same few minutes and who have had to remember them every day since.
But Atonement is undoubtedly at its most affecting in the glimpses it gives us of the Khachaturian family, particularly in the small ways it shows how deeply scarred they remain, jumping at a closing door or any sound that faintly resembles a gunshot. Their willingness to meet Lou comes from an admirable desire to do what they believe is right, but the film also convincingly keeps their anger and sadness underneath, making the reunion considerably more painful for them than it is for him. Hiam Abbass, in particular, conveys an enormous amount through every intense look, moving from confusion and anger toward a compassion that never erases what happened. Mariam and her family may eventually be able to give Lou something he desperately needs, but he can never return the same favor. He may leave believing that the meeting helped them as much as it helped him, but there is simply no forgiveness capable of restoring what they lost. The film somewhat softens that message with a final shot that feels too resolved for everything that came before, but the smaller moments in between are enough to show that the pain will never go away that easily.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Atonement deals with difficult themes and even harder conversations, and while it never extracts everything possible from its premise, largely because of the limited and inevitably American point of view through which the story is told, its intentions are thoughtful enough to make the film work. It may not leave you floored, but there is something deeply affecting in the compassion shown by the Khachaturian family, while serving as another painful reminder of the monstrosity of the Iraq War.
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- Where to watch
- Coming soon
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
Play trailer
- Original title
- Atonement
- Director
- Reed Van Dyk
- Cast
- Boyd Holbrook, Hiam Abbass, Kenneth Branagh, Gheed, Majd Eid, Tahseen Dahis, Yara Bakri, Gratiela Brancusi
- Screenwriter
- Reed Van Dyk
- Cinematography
- Jon Peter
- Editor
- Chelsi Johnston
- Country
- Language
- English