A commonality among most American movies about Middle Eastern wars is their strict focus on U.S. soldiers — see last year’s startlingly immersive Warfare — from the hell of active combat to years of PTSD-related psychological fallout, generally reducing the enemy to faceless “others” with neither names nor humanity. First-time feature director Reed Van Dyk establishes from the start that Atonement will veer from that course, opening on three generations of a close-knit Iraqi family, the Khachaturians, staying temporarily in the same chaotic house, ostensibly outside the conflict zone.
While TV news coverage of airstrikes on Baghdad proclaims, “The great invader has arrived,” a young mother instructs her children not to talk to or accept anything from American soldiers they might encounter. Despite that underlying tension, kids play on the street outside while the large family has a dynamic like any other — noisily squabbling, joking, or in the case of the matriarchal grandmother, Mariam (Hiam Abbass), preparing a meal in a kitchen plagued by constant utility outages.
Atonement
The Bottom Line
Clear-eyed, even-handed and elevated by a remarkable performance.
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight)
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Boyd Holbrook, Hiam Abbass, Gheed, Majd Eid, Tahseen Dahis, Gratiela Brancusi, Amanda Warren, Yara Bakri, Khris Davis
Director-screenwriter: Reed Van Dyk, adapted from the New Yorker article by Dexter Filkins
1 hour 58 minutes
It’s 2003, the early days of the Iraq War, and in a direct jab that will rankle anyone unwilling to think objectively about American interventionism, someone observes that Washington has been sounding the Weapons of Mass Destruction alarm for years: “They bomb the whole world so they can feel safe.” But although it remains regrettably timely given what’s happening in Iran, this is not a provocation intended to attribute blame, merely to show the reality of weary civilians trying to live normal lives in a city under attack.
Mariam has relatively little dialogue in this opening section, and yet her natural gravitas and intelligence signal that she will be the drama’s moral center, embodied by Abbass with quiet command. The Palestinian actress has been doing exceptional work for decades — she was divine as Logan Roy’s third wife Marcia, the coolly sophisticated Queen of Shade on Succession — but her mesmerizing performance here ranks with her very best.
She plays a woman hollowed out by the events that transpire but never numbed; even years later her eyes reveal both kindness and a lacerating pain that will be with her forever. That begins when a sudden explosion rips the side off the house. Miraculously, no one is hurt, but Mariam wastes no time marshaling them into cars to head to her home across town, away from the blast zone.
Van Dyk and his cinematographer Jon Peter handle the panic and confusion of that journey with gritty assurance. A U.S. Marine squad has taken up position at an intersection to engage in “a show of force.” Second lieutenant Lou D’Alessandro (Boyd Holbrook) is ordered to take a group of soldiers up on a roof to fire on hostile Iraqis.
As the Khachaturians’ vehicles approach, they hear the gunfire and rocket blasts but are unable to identify where the sound is coming from until they find themselves in the thick of it.
Bullets shatter the car windsscreens and soldiers yell commands, but in the clouds of dust churned up by explosions, it all happens too fast for the Marines to recognize the family as civilians. Mariam waves her grandchild’s white onesie out the window to signal peaceful compliance, but before she can stop them, her husband and two adult sons step out of the vehicles with their arms raised, shouting “Don’t shoot.”
This nerve-rattling sequence that leaves three of the Khachaturian men dead is a wrenching depiction of innocent casualties brought down by split-second combat decisions. When the men in Lou’s squad see Mariam’s wounded daughter Nora (Gheed) among the surviving passengers, holding an infant spattered with blood, they realize their mistake — in one case with delirious anguish — and quickly move the family to safety. The shock and disbelief on their faces in the hospital scene that follows is acutely distressing.
It’s at this point that New York Times reporter Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) — standing in for noted combat journalist Dexter Filkins, whose 2012 New Yorker article of the same name inspired the film — enters the picture. He listens sympathetically to the Khachaturians’ account of what happened, particularly that of Mariam, a former schoolteacher.
Michael then tries talking to the soldiers. Before the squad lieutenant (Kris Davis) can get rid of him, on the grounds that he’s unauthorized to be there, he gets a few words out of Lou, who appears surly and unremorseful. He seems to be telling himself it was their fault when he asks why civilians would choose to drive through that intersection: “Did they have a death wish?”
The action then skips forward ten years. After eight deployments and a dishonorable discharge, Lou is back in the U.S., living in San Diego and working multiple jobs — nightclub bouncer, event security, construction — while trying to get around bureaucratic hurdles to enroll in law school. His on-off girlfriend Anna (Yara Bakri) knows enough to keep her distance during his volatile panic attacks. The breakdowns and suicides of his fellow squad members eat away at his stability as much as his own trauma. “We killed those people,” sobs a fellow Marine on the phone.
Eighteen months later, Michael is now a New Yorker staff writer; his article on the surviving Khachaturian family, who have since relocated to Glendale, California, catches Lou’s attention. Having only considered the family’s perspective after he was discharged, Lou becomes convinced that talking to them will help him move forward. He also perhaps naively believes it will help them to heal. He contacts Michael to mediate a meeting, a request the reporter’s partner Olivia (Amanda Warren) deems selfish. She’s dubious about him even wanting forgiveness or reconciliation.
While the Iraq scenes (shot in Jordan) are viscerally gripping, it’s in the emotional final stretch that Van Dyk’s script acquires its richest psychological layers. Michael approaches the Khachaturians with tact and sensitivity. (With customary integrity, Branagh plays an honorable journalist, a man of substance just when the Fourth Estate could use some positive representation.) The family’s reactions range from Nora’s husband Asaad (Majd Eid), whom she met in the Baghdad hospital, snarling, “I’d rather kill him than let him into my house,” to Mariam, who is conflicted but decides they should give Lou what he needs to move on.
Despite that compassionate conviction, Mariam on the morning of Lou’s visit becomes unsure whether she can go through with it. But when he’s sitting right in front of her, stuttering, weeping and trembling as he attempts to say what he came to say, Mariam fixes a cold, emotionless gaze on him: “We forgive you, that’s what you need from us, right?” Her words infer that they need nothing from him; they have no more tears to shed.
Abbass gives a master class in less-is-more restraint in these scenes, her character’s fortitude severely challenged but unbroken by her years of suffering. This is acting of the highest caliber. Holbrook also is affecting, his character a bundle of exposed nerves as he reckons with his own guilt and with the tremendous weight of grief and anger on the Iraqi family.
Van Dyk at times shows his hand as the script reveals the gradual softening of the Khachaturians toward their guest. Having Mariam observe that Lou reminds her of one of her dead sons seems a ham-fisted touch, as does Anna saying during a veterans’ support group meeting: “I think when you pick up a gun and shoot, the bullet moves both ways.” The director is more measured in his effective use of Zak Engel’s melancholy score.
Regardless of its flaws, Atonement is admirable in the way it humanizes people on the opposite side of a conflict, treating their crippling losses as a source of collective pain while observing a U.S. Marine — trained to point and shoot with no consequences — as he comes to reflect on and take responsibility for his actions. Perhaps it could use a new title, to stop people from expecting Baby Saoirse and Keira in a slinky emerald green gown, but it’s a movie that might make Pete Hegseth’s head explode, which has to be considered a plus.
