Fantastic ‘Atonement’ Examines the Human Cost of the Iraq War | TIFF Review

About 15 minutes into Atonement, there’s a moment when the matriarch of a close-knit family is trapped in a car with her grown children and grandchild, as U.S. Marines and Iraqi insurgents exchange gunfire around them. Mariam, played with heartbreaking restraint by Hiam Abbass, tries desperately to make it clear that they are civilians, but everything happens way too quickly for logic to even register. With no way to know where the bullets are coming from, the whole scene soon becomes unbearable to watch. It’s a tense, heart-pounding moment, and director Reed Van Dyk shoots it with such immediacy that it feels less like watching a war scene and more like being dropped into the middle of one, with no idea where safety is.