Healthy Living Books DVD

Rating: - Does not live up to the hype
I was very disappointed with this movie. It promised much but delivered little, confusing plot, but very well acted.
Not a film I would watch again.

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Rating: - Despite Keira's presence this is well worth watching
If like me, you think that Keira is very much over rated, don't be put off by her presence in this film, her role does not make nor carry the film (I am at a loss as to why she gets such a high billing ). The atmosphere and emotional story are brilliantly portrayed by the three actresses playing Briony and James McAvoy playing Robbie. There is little point in repeating the plot but I will say that the pace does not falter, the way the film knits together imagination and reality is powerful and one certainly experiences the mental anguish felt by Briony.

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Rating: - All because of a four letter word....
I only really came to this film because of all the Oscar buzz around it and knowing that James Macavoy was really good in Last King of Scotland. However, I was a bit worried about Ikea Knightley, and so I should have been. It says something that the best bits of the film are happening when one of the leads isn't on screen. The war imagery and the Part played by Macavoy is excellant, its just a shame a better actress counldn't have played the Ikea role, nevermind I really wanted to her to be good in it aswell.

Definaltey worth watching, just don't believe all the hype.

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Rating: - Stunning.
This movie had me in tears, I've never been so moved by a film before.
The characters, Cecelia, Robbie & Briony, are excellently portrayed by Keira, James and Saoirse. I would definitely recommend to anyone, even if it's not their type of genre. It's a must-see. It's absolutely stunning.

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Rating: - Oh so pretty, oh so clever - maybe too clever?
Yes, Keira Knightly (Celia) is ravishing and James McAvoy (Robbie) is studly and the child-acting (Briony, Lola) is of a wonderful quality; the script is sharp and arch in all the right ways and the photography is simply immaculate. I can't unsay a word of the praise that has been rightly heaped on this film.

I was predisposing myself to dislike this film, you see - in spite of being thoroughly seduced by the director's previous outting, the Keira vehicle Pride & Prejudice - 2005. Dislike it why? Well, not the Edwardian setting or prim English reserve on offer. I mean, if The Go-Between and Brideshead Revisited leave you cold, why on earth are you watching a film like this anyway? But I adore Waugh and Hartley and Graham Greene and McEwan's novel seems to synthesise all of them, so I positively wanted the lawns to be as clipped as Keira's vowels and wartime London to be seedy and dystopian. No no, all of that is marvelous. I guess I just dreaded the Keira/McAvoy love story drenching everything in syrup, pressing a lot of cinematic buttons to make us, the viewers, like unlikeable people - you know, the way The English Patient [1996] did?

So, surprisingly, the film had quite the opposite effect on me. I was enchanted by the central love story, which manages just the right degree of reticence, and found myself rooting for the two, strangely remote, protagonists. In fact, if the film has a shortcoming, it's that it's too aloof, too clever, too stylised.

For example, in a breathtaking cinematic tour-de-force, the evacuation of Dunkirk is introduced through a stunning tracking shot that follows Robbie and his soldiers across the beach, past the shooting of horses and the burning of books (note: symbolism; the novel's themes of failed communication and the destructive power of the word being illuminated), once round the bandstand where the traumatised troops sing a baleful hymn, across the shattered promenade with the ironic symbol of the ferris wheel rotating in the background and onto the pier where drunken squaddies retch into the sea, only to touch upon the soldiers' hymn again, wafted to us on the breeze.

So stunning, in fact, I had to rewind and watch it again! I was impressed, yes, but somehow a film should wear its technical accomplishment more lightly, don't you think? The percussive rhythm of typewriter keys that drives the soundtrack along is daring and hints at the plot's true nature - the novelistic construction created by Briony, not a "true story" at all - but serves somehow to rob the whole of ambiguity, rather than enhancing it.

Maybe I'm straining at gnats while swallowing elephants. This is a beautifully shot, imaginatively constructed and artfully acted movie, a masterclass really. If, in creating an ingenious adaptation of a clever-clever book by a clever-clever author, it's become a little too clever-clever itself, well who can blame it?

I was going to award this film four stars, to reflect my slight discomfort with its overly-intellectual style and construction. Then I gave myself a pinch. For goodness' sake, how many films can you really criticise for being intellectual while still managing to pack an emotional punch too? Here's a film that works on every level and anyone who stays away from it because they dislike period dramas or novelistic adaptations or stick-thin Keira is impoverishing themselves. Bravo to movies like this - and more of them, please!