'Atonement' quickly turns self-conscious and silly

Joe Wright's doggedly faithful, emotionally stunted adaptation of Ian McEwan's "Atonement" centers on 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), who -- in 1935, at her family's estate in Surrey -- is busy writing and directing a play in honor of her older brother, Leon (Patrick Kennedy).

During a break in rehearsals, she wanders to the window of an upstairs room, where she witnesses a strange sight: Across the estate grounds, her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) is fighting with Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of the Tallis' servants.

Looking enraged and embarrassed, Cecilia strips to her underwear and jumps into a fountain. With her overactive imagination, Briony automatically assumes she's witnessed some sort of humiliation -- and that Robbie is a sexual deviant.

McEwan's novel, published in 2001, is partly about the tragic consequences of Briony's misunderstanding. Mostly, though, it's a study of the way writers reconstruct reality in their fiction in order to forgive themselves their worst sins. (The novel is presented to us as the adult Briony's manuscript -- a remembrance of the events 60-plus years after they happened.) These are heady themes that have no place in a movie version -- the screenwriter, Christopher Hampton ("Dangerous Liaisons"), probably would have done well to excise them entirely.

Instead, he falls right into McEwan's egghead trap. As a movie, "Atonement" never really decides if it's the epic story of Cecilia and Robbie's failed romance; or if it's about Briony's lifelong quest to atone for slandering Robbie; or if it's some kind of meta-fiction about the untrustworthiness of the writer's perspective. It just ends up being a tedious, confused slog -- handsomely appointed and well-acted, but a slog nonetheless.

Cecilia and Robbie, it turns out, were merely having a modest dispute. When Robbie tried to grab the expensive vase Cecilia was carrying, a piece of it broke off and fell into the fountain. But this is just the first of many mishaps and misperceptions that propel the story.

We're also asked to believe that, in short order, Robbie would have Briony deliver a note of apology to Cecilia; that Robbie would accidentally hand off the wrong draft of the note; that Briony would open this note and read its vulgar content and again assume the worst; and, later, that Briony would stumble upon the young couple making love for the first time and think that Robbie was committing rape.

These plot twists come straight out of the novel, where they already stretched the limits of credibility. On the big screen, without the benefit of McEwan's eloquent, restrained prose, it all just seems ludicrous and overheated -- a British-accented episode of "Days of Our Lives." By the time two young twins go missing, and Briony then stumbles upon her brother's friend Paul (Benedict Cumberbatch) committing a sexual assault, the story has turned so dopey that it's impossible to watch it with a straight face.

In the final moments, Briony makes a final surprise revelation that's supposed to reduce us to tears. But by then "Atonement" has turned unbearably twee and artificial -- a self-conscious stunt.