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.
