*SPOILERS* I haven't been this angry after watching a movie since.....

I couldn't agree more. Why do writers and directions have to tear our freakin hearts out?! It's torture. I have only ever watched atonement once because it broke my heart that much and this one will be the same. I turned it on because I wanted to watch a love story happy ending put you in a good mood type movie, not this. Crying my face off was not what I wanted.

Same! I actually think atonement is a really good film, but I can't watch it again it's too sad... Would keep hoping for a happier ending somehow!

It's one of those movies that depicts real life. In the real world there isn't a happy ending always. Bad guys do win. I was upset with the ending too because you expect with a Nicholas Sparks story there's a happy ending but I do like that he dared to be different this time. Atonement was incredibly depressing too but again it's realistic. Jane Austen is the only one you can trust for a happy ending. But see she wrote her stories purposefully so that all her heroines would get the happy ending she never had. in reality her life missed the very thing she wrote about in her stories which is sad but it's the real world.

Oh but Atonement is based on an actual work of literature, while this installment of the "white people almost kissing" series is just meant to be a guilty pleasure chick-flick. Real literature can have a sad ending, whereas the whole point of a chick-flick, let alone a cheesefest like this one, is to provide a happy ending that's as unrealistic as the rest of the romance that unfolds in the movie.

All I'm thinking with this ending is how she's gonna feel every time she hugs her son from now on: "I love you cause you're my son, but you also have my dead lover's heart beating in your chest - oooh let me feel that for a bit" 

~*~

I love Atonement so much. The book is even more devastating than the movie, if you can believe it. It's one of my favorites, but I've only read it one time because I need to function in the real world and can't afford to rock back and forth on my couch crying for months at a time.