Disdain. Desire. More disdain. Even more heat.
So swings Cecilia Tallis’ emotional pendulum before settling on Robbie Turner in “Atonement,” which opens Dec. 8.
She’s to the manor born and, as the film opens, in 1935, rather bored.
He’s the son of the estate’s housekeeper. She went to Cambridge. With the help of her father, so did he.
Summer finds them back in the countryside, living an upstairs-downstairs — or indoors-outdoors — tension.
She pouts about the grounds. He tends them.
Cecilia and Robbie are portrayed by two of Britain’s bright young things: Keira Knightley and comer James McAvoy (“The Last King of Scotland”).
Knightley’s career has itself traced some intriguing arcs.
Her slender loveliness has made her a magazine-cover fashion plate. But there is a physical vibrancy directors are drawn to, a tougher-than- she-looks promise. That energy appears matched by a confident curiosity.
Sitting in a hotel suite above a bustling Toronto avenue, the London-born actress begins at the beginning: with her folks, actor Will Knightley and actress-turned-playwright Sharman Macdonald.
“My dad was a founding member of two stage companies. One called Out of Joint and. ” She pauses. The lull’s only worth noting because the general poise is impressive. “Oh, I’m going to get this wrong. But what it is is 7 percent of the population with 84 percent of the wealth. Or is it 82 percent?”
She decides it’s likely the higher ratio. It is. The Scottish company is called 7:84.
“They both believe that art can make a difference in the world and could change things. Seeing people that empowered and that passionate about what they do as a child is extraordinary and incredibly powerful.”
How could she help but want to be part of that world?
“I think a lot of people think acting’s about games, about being a child. But I never wanted to be a child. I saw it as a very adult thing to do — to create realities. So that’s what I did.”
At 16, Knightley stormed onto the field as Jules in “Bend It Like Beckham.”
The next year, she sealed a huge part of the deal when she became fine foil — swashbuckling pun intended — Elizabeth Swann in 2003’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”
Action impresario Tony Scott hoped to exploit the vigor coursing through Knightley’s fine frame when he cast her in “Domino,” based on the legend of deceased bounty hunter Domino Harvey.
Betwixt saber-rattling and gun-toting, Knightley played the object of much ardor in the roundelay “Love Actually,” and portrayed a battle-ready Guinevere in “King Arthur.”
Domino lost the box-office tussle to a different era’s feisty heroine: Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet. For the “Pride & Prejudice” role, Knightley garnered an Academy Award and a Golden Globe nomination.
“Atonement” reteams her with “Pride & Prejudice” director Joe Wright.
Based on Ian McEwan’s novel about love, deceit, war and writerly remembrance as a restorative gesture, “Atonement” is no romantic pastoral. The tale belongs to Cecilia’s younger sister, a budding author and teller of a devastating lie.
The lie does its work, keeping the lovers apart. World War II makes the separation more desperate.
With the shift from a disturbed peace to unfathomable war, “Atonement” becomes a requiem for blitzed London, as well as Britain’s soldiers and nurses.
“I’m fascinated by the resolve and how people got through it,” said Knightley, who remembers her grandparents’ stories. “The fact that you have death raining from the sky all around you and you cling to life with absolutely everything you’ve got.”
She’s keenly aware of the swing implied in appearing in last summer’s “Pirates” sequel and a movie sure to gain critical traction when it opens, she says.
“I want to do different things. To make something that is pure entertainment and then to do films that make people think about their actions, the actions in the film.
” ‘Pirates’ is meant to be like a glass of champagne. If somebody can go in, turn their mind off and have a nice time, that’s fine.”
Fine, indeed. Though one imagines Jack Sparrow’s saga less like a flute of bubbly than a good pint at the pub.
