I remember how it was

Does Atonement deserve the Best Picture award it got from Oscar last year? Can you believe that United Kingdom is such a beautiful place? The cinematographer has done a tremendous job in creating Atonement, and even though I didn't like the story, I love how the movie looked. It was a visual extravaganza.
Sitting in the comfort of my living room at home, I was treated with a story that started before the Second World War broke out when all the characters were younger. The beginning of the movie captures viewer's attention by showing the same image of the front of the dollhouse and the front of the country estate the main character lives in. This is a story about a misunderstood Romeo and a spoiled Juliet, but the way the story is told somehow ruined the beauty created in the beginning of the film. Perhaps that's exactly what the director wanted, Atonement is about repentence of a woman who told a lie that affected people's life. It's about love that was lost due to the misunderstanding of a young child. It was unjust for the man who didn't commit the crime to go to jail. It was not right for the girl to grow up and marry the man who raped her when she was a teenager so he will never go to jail. This monstrous result also gives us enough evidence to speculate that maybe she was not raped at all. The movie is about the ugliness of war. London is transformed into a place where lovers have little time to see one another, and most men have no tomorrow. To think that the story will have a happy ending is naive, and we are not watching a Disney film. There's no justice. The girl grows up never telling the truth in court, never clearing Robbie's name, never atone her sins. Romeo and Juliet died on two continents, alone, just days short of D Day.
I like watching war movies. They bring out the worst, and they bring out the best of us. We can learn from this movie because one lie can't damage you right now, but you can never take the lie back. A lie will always hurt somebody, and it will never go away. It saddens me that there's no real Atonement in this movie, but maybe I am wrong. By telling us this story, the girl has atoned her sins even though nothing will make it better for the people who died in the war. I also think that this movie is close to my heart because my family is affected by the war. Granddad fought in the Pacific and nearly lost his family in China, if he didn't find my grandma then my dad wouldn't even be here. Mum's family also suffered greatly from the war, losing everything and taking on the responsibility of close to twenty people with one income. Mum told me that she couldn't afford to buy shoes for singing recitals in primary school, borrowing someone else's shoes was the norm and they were way too small. Who would listen to a young girl's complain then? Yes, we've come very far from then. I wish we can remember how painful it was and never make the mistake of warring again.