Forbidden love has never been so green.

With masterful filmmaking and a compelling story, Atonement is a powerful movie that’s undone a bit by its own ambition. The darn thing is just too epic.

We start off at the stately English home of the Tallis family on the eve of World War II. 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan) witnesses a series of encounters between her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of the family’s housekeeper. With limited context and a 13-year-old’s simultaneous curiosity about and repulsion for sex, Briony convinces herself that Robbie’s intentions are sinister, leading her to make a huge mistake with tragic consequences.

Director Joe Wright plays brilliantly with perspective. He may show us the same scene from different points of view, or intercut an incident with another character’s account of it. The art direction takes center stage as he sets up striking, unsettling images. It has one of the best typewriter-based scores I’ve heard in a long time, every clack of a key landing like a slap to the face.

When the plot progresses and Robbie goes off to war, the film loses focus for me. Technical marvels those scenes are, but without the emotional punch of the movie’s first half. This section could have been condensed down to a brief sequence, allowing the film to move on to its head-trip of an ending. You may find yourself cursing Ian McEwan, whose novel is adapted here by Christopher Hampton. But if you’re like me, even though the movie might lose you for a while, it’s the one you’ll still be thinking about weeks later.*

* Yeah, weeks. I haven’t been that ambitious about writing reviews, obviously.

Gorilla Pants rating: 3 out of 4 bananas