Gimmicks weigh 'Juno' down
The difference between a film like Pulp Fiction and Juno is that one film has characters that talk the way real people do and the other has characters that talk the way people do in a screenwriter's fantasy. When John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson discussed the translation of a quarter-pounder in Paris, the result was exhilarating - at last, a film in which dialogue seemed free-flowing and natural and not manufactured and labored. In Juno, however, screenwriter Diablo Cody works to make her characters sound fresh, hip, and genuine and the film becomes too self-aware. The film would have been better if it did not try so hard.
There is, to be sure, a charming, enduring, lovable story to be found somewhere in Juno, and Ellen Page's performance in this film shows that she is well on her way to becoming one of cinema's most talented young stars. And yet her performance as Juno MacGuff, a 16-year-old motor-mouth who gets impregnated by her almost-boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) is also a tip-off to what is wrong with the film. Juno is a character so sarcastic, so indifferent and un-amused, so ironically self-aware that she becomes less endearing the more she spits out Diablo Cody's ferociously caustic dialogue. Even scenes that are read to be heartwarming and touching are brought to a halt because, to put it simply, she talks like a 16- year-old girl who was raised by screenwriters.
The film follows her as she discloses her pregnancy to her parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney), decides to keep the child, and give it up to adoption to a seemingly perfect yuppie couple (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner in an absolutely heartbreaking performance). There is nothing inherently original in the plot of this indie film (as opposed to Napoleon Dynamite, which was truly the first of its kind). So to make the film more "indie," Cody makes everyone, with the obvious exception of Garner, talk like Rodney Dangerfield filtered through Jim Gaffigan. The result is a film that is entertaining but less than genuine. B-
Passion imbues the film adaptation of 'Atonement'
Keira Knightley and James McAvoy tear into each other with such ferocious abandonment in the first act of Atonement that its audience's desire to see them together becomes all the more tragic - it becomes clear that director Joe Wright is setting everything up to fall apart. When the family gardener Robbie Turner (McAvoy) ravishes the aristocratic Cecilia Tallis (Knightley) in the library, there is a faint echo of Romeo and Juliet - fate will not allow these two to stay together, and so it intervenes - with the ruthlessness of a Greek tragedy. A letter that was not meant to be read by anyone is read by the wrong person. A certain act is grossly misinterpreted by a young girl. One man is mistaken for another. The result is cataclysmic.
Atonement, set in England during the opening years of World War II, is a breathtaking, devastating epic love story. Wright, working from a novel by Ian McEwan, has fashioned a tragic tale of passion, regret, and remorse, as two lovers separated first by misunderstanding and then by war resolve to find each other, and another young girl grows to understand the full weight of her actions. Knightley and McAvoy have a chemistry that is searing and palpable, and all three actresses who play sister Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave) capture her with the same level of immeasurable guilt. Not to mention that the style is worthy of the substance - this a sweeping film in every sense of the word. The cinematography by Seamus McGarvey turns every image into a great poetic statement (the evacuation of Dunkirk is a masterpiece), the score by Dario Marianelli gives a soundtrack for the great tragedy that occurs, and the final monologue by Redgrave bring all the elements together in manner reminiscent of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Behind all of this, there is hope - hope that love will conquer all. There is also fear - fear that it will not. This is truly one of the best films of the year. A
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