Big, classy, Oscar-bait World War II dramas don’t really get much better than Atonement, Joe Wright’s swooning adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel. If the last half hour or so seems to drag to a bit of an anti-climax, it’s only because the first forty minutes are so exhiliaratingly jam-packed with style, plot and character nuance, that the rest of the film is necessarily spent with both characters and viewers struggling to comprehend the full weight of what came before. Atonement swells to an early high and then glides down to earth, and it’s only at the deceptively low end that the film’s massive emotional arc becomes apparent.

It’s in this early section that Wright perfects an almost seamless method of time-shifting, in order to display events several times from the point of view of different players–a brilliant cinematic interpretation of an extremely novelistic device. The action begins on a languid summer day in 1935, on the impossibly grande English country estate of the Tallis family. Precocious, play-writing 13 year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) watches from an upstairs window as her older sister Cecelia (Keira Knightley) has an ambiguous, compromising altercation at an outdoor fountain with Robbie (James McAvoy), a servant’s son whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Cecelia and Briony’s father. Briony slams the window and we cut back in time, to Ceclia flouncing out of the mansion and onto the grounds, where she meets up with Robbie and strolls with him out to the fountain. The incident looks very different from the ground, and it soon becomes clear that Robbie and Cecilia are dancing around their mutual but unspoken love.

Over the course of the evening, Briony will witness three additional incidents, two directly involving Ceclia and Robbie and another open to interpretation, and she will drastically misinterpret all. Out of some mix of jealousy and younger-sister frustration, Briony carelessly manipulates these misunderstandings, until the sisters can only watch––Cecelia, without recourse; Briony, it seems, without guilt––as Robbie is removed from their lives for the foreseeable future.

The film then flashes forward several years. World War II is underway, and in order to escape the consequences of that night at the Tallis estate, Robbie has joined the military. Lost in France, he’s determined to get back to England to resume his romance with Cecelia, who has in turn abandoned the Tallis clan and lifestyle in order to care for wounded soldiers in London. Now 18 and wracked with guilt, Briony becomes obsessed with repairing the damage she’s done. First she follows in Cecelia’s footsteps as a nurse; then, in a final flash-forward, we see how she’s carried the weight of guilt and sorrow over that single evening in 1935 throughout her whole life.

Atonement is very much a period film, superficially in its propaganda poster palette, but also in the sense that Wright seems to be trying to capture the scope of a Selznick epic, matched with the broad emotional contortions of a late 30s/early 40s “woman’s picture.” There are few concessions to modern tastes, unless you count the slight puffing of the role of Cecelia to better utilize It-girl Knightley (who acquits herself admirably, and perhaps more importantly for a film like this, looks heartbreakingly gorgeous in pin curls and red lipstick).

There are no direct parallels to contemporary conflicts in Atonement, only the very general nod to the ways in which large-scale wars fundamentally alter lives. Though their relationship faces class-based obstacles from the outset, the war actually has the power to level the playing field between Cecelia and Robbie, allowing them to temporarily reunite. The conflict keeps the would-be lovers physically apart, but simultaneously closer than ever. For the first time, the couple can fantasize about a real future together, because the horrors of a war like this renders class distinctions meaningless. Considering the socio-economic realities of our current war, with “selective service” translating for rich, Ivy League, corporate overlords-turned-politicians relying on what they apparently think is an endless supply of poor, undereducated, largely non-white teenagers, Atonement’s generous gesture towards the equalizing power of war feels quaintly last-century-specific. In fact, by making a sweeping, war-torn love story that refuses to directly comment on contemporary events, in a roundabout way Wright draws attention to the impossibility of wringing romantic propaganda out of Iraq.

Certainly, the film’s above-board lack of politics has fueled its rapturous reaction in Toronto and Venice. It’s an odd climate out there: with so many long-gestating regurgitations of war frustrations hitting the festivals at the same time, buyers and audiences, surely overwhelmed, seem to be knee-jerk turning towards still-intelligent but veritably lighter fare. It’s the kind of climate that could do a lush indulgence like Atonement an awful lot of good.