In 2005, first-time director Joe Wright’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice surprised critics and audiences with its beauty and grace. It was a good film, even though it maddened a few Austen purists. Fresh from his success with P&P, Wright brings Ian McEwan’s Atonement to the screen with just as much visual panache and a cast that would make any more seasoned director rightfully envious.

The film opens with young Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan; the best performance in the film) hammering out the final pages of a play she has written for her cousins to perform on the night of an important family gathering. Briony is a fledgling writer with a formidable imagination … an imagination that, as the story proves, has the capability to both create and destroy. Her mind is one that is so full of raw creative power that she has is unable to filter the things she sees through any other lens than that of her creative fantasies.

Looking out the window of an upper-story room on her family’s estate one afternoon, Briony witnesses her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the educated son of her family’s housekeeper, have an argument which Briony interprets as sexual abuse from her limited vantage point. The young writer’s mind is set afire even more by a note written by Robbie to Cecilia which communicates his “sexual deviance” with the use of the “worst word you can possibly imagine.” Thoughts of these events swirl and fester in her mind as she concocts a story that she regards as reality. If only Briony were be able to see past her limitless imagination to the truth behind these events; the rapidly burgeoning love between Cecilia and Robbie that will continue to grow in the latter parts of the story even as it is tested by the spoils of war and the horrors of death.

The first 45 minutes of Atonement serve as a prime of example excellent novel adaptation. Ian McEwan’s masterful tale is one of explicit characterization, nuance, and intense psycholigical profiling. Wright’s direction is patiently observant of all these literary devices in the film’s first act and the use of cross-cutting, flashforwards, and flashbacks make the scenes as compelling as anything seen in the cinema this year. The moments fly by and it is a joy to watch.

The rest of the film remains just as visually captivating and terrifically acted. The story requires three actresses playing Briony at different points in her life and the casting is superb. James McAvoy proves again that he can play most any part and Keira Knightley is luminous as Cecilia Tallis, the bold and passionate young woman who has much to learn about true love. Dario Marianelli’s score is inventive and appropriately sweeping; it is sure to win awards. There is a constant stream of striking imagery and a beautiful five-minute tracking shot set on the beaches of Dunkirk that rivals last year’s Children of Men with its vision and scope. What is lost in the rest of the film is the focus on character. Where Ian McEwan’s novel persevered in telling an epic romance with stark realism, Joe Wright’s film falters, turning the story into a muddled melodrama that turns sappy when it should be emotionally jarring.

It is difficult to examine the critical differences between Joe Wright’s film and Ian McEwan’s novel without giving away important plot details. Suffice it to say that in the novel there is an epilogue that makes readers question everything that has gone before. The author uses his story to bring up questions about the nature of art and storytelling, guilt, forgiveness, and despair. It is in no way melodramatic, but is hearkening and intensely thought-provoking. The final portion of the screenplay makes use of the plot point and themes of the novel’s end, but cuts them short. Not only is the power of McEwan’s ending partially plucked away, but because the film conforms itself to conventional melodrama after the first act, the emotional response of the audience is far different from what Ian McEwan devised so masterfully in his novel.

I have no problem with melodrama, but this is not a story suited to sensationalism. Even so, I don’t mean to make Atonement sound like a bad film … far from. In reality, it is one of the better films to come out this year and as a film functions remarkably well. Although I had complaints with how the latter parts of the film were structured, I didn’t let them distract me from what the film is: a luxurious and thought-provoking story of love and guilt brought to the screen by an excellent cast and a gifted young director of considerable skill.