Ian McEwan is one of the best living authors and Atonement is one of his best novels. When it was announced that Joe Wright, the man who breathed new life into Pride & Prejudice, was the man chosen to tackle the seemingly unfilmable book, fans of Atonement were understandably cautious. Atonement is an incredible story about the power of imagination and the written word, but it is a work that the reader can almost picture going wrong on the big screen as they're reading it. It would be so easy for a writer and director to focus on the wrong elements of Atonement and turn it into a chest-heaving, window-gazing melodrama. There's a lot more going on in McEwan's book than your average costume drama and we were naturally concerned that Wright would turn it into a stuffy period piece and lose the passion, the emotion, and the heartbreak that McEwan can miraculously achieve without a single manipulative phrase. Five minutes in to Atonement and all of the fears of the fans of the book will have been completely eliminated. Atonement has gone from being one of the best books of the last ten years to one of the best films of 2007 and has barely lost a note of its grace or brilliance.

13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) is an emotional and imaginative girl. One day before a dinner party she glances out the window to see an unusual interaction between her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and the son of the family housekeeper, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). Briony sees Robbie hold his hand out to push Cecilia away and then sees her sister strip and jump in the fountain. Two more incidents, including a letter that was never meant to be seen by anyone much less Briony and the poor girl catching her sister and her lover in action, leads the imaginative girl to think that Robbie is a sexual predator on the loose. With visions of horror in her head, Briony makes a crucial decision and accuses Robbie of a crime he didn't commit, sending all three of their lives spiraling off in different directions as the horrors of World War II loom around the corner.

Atonement is a drama about the ripple effect of human action. If Briony doesn't look out the window at that one moment and if a glimmer doesn't catch her eye later, life for Cecilia and Robbie would have been drastically different. It's also a book and screenplay about the amazing human ability to come back from those kind of fate-changing decisions, sometimes decades later. Briony's imagination forever shapes her life and the final scenes, when she finally has realized how to use that imagination to make amends, are as powerful as anything you'll see this year.

The reason those final scenes work as well as they do are, of course, because of the exquisitely crafted two hours that precede them. Atonement is not only a brilliant screenplay but, almost more unexpectedly, an amazing technical achievement. Every level of the technical design from the Oscar-worthy, gorgeous score by Dario Marianelli to the already-legendary cinematography by Seamus McGarvey works seamlessly together to create a film that feels more like poetry than prose, an appropriate tone for a piece about the power of imagination. McGarvey orchestrates an amazing tracking shot in the middle of the film on the war-torn beaches of Dunkirk that jaw-dropping in its complexity and beauty. It's one of the most memorable scenes in years and it's even more than the technical achievement it's been given credit for because it thematically links the first and second halves of the film. Like the best films, the visuals in Atonement work with the story and the ensemble in a cohesive vision not just on top of them as bells and whistles.

The production design, costume work, editing, score, and cinematography could all steal Oscars early next year, but it's the restrained work by director Joe Wright with his actors that will seal Atonement's place on dozens of top ten lists this year. McAvoy was good in The Last King of Scotland, but he goes to a new place in Atonement and could easily sneak into the best actor category this year. He injects Robbie with the perfect sense of restraint - Mr. Turner is a class lower than his love - and, in the end, justifiable anger. Knightley is good but the film gets stolen from her by the two young women who play Briony at different ages - Saoirse Ronan and Romola Garai. Ronan has a face that was made for film - she's instantly charismatic - and Garai has a very complex emotional arc in the final scenes that she performs perfectly.

The best novels can be revisited and not only still beloved but give their readers something different every time. It's incredibly rare for the film industry to take a great novel and not only keep what made it brilliant but provide an experience akin to rereading it, giving you what you loved and offering the new perspective that comes with a second reading. Atonement does just that, actually making the book better in memory after having seen it and not tarnishing it in the slightest. Fans of the book and people who've never even heard of it can enjoy Atonement in equal measure. Wright didn't just take a great book and turn it into a movie. He created visual poetry from beautiful prose.