The first part of the film is in chronological order leading up to the moment of the betrayal at the core of the film, the second half jumps backward in time to tell the events during World War II, and then far into the future to explain the motivation of the fictional writer of this story. A viewer does have to pay attention to piece things together, and I think I got tripped up a few times during the wartime sections. I felt a little let down that the identification of the perpetrator of the crime was left out at the midpoint of the film, depicted only in flashback during the last section, which changed my interpretation of the Briony character's motivation at the end. The scene where she confronts her family members was portrayed as being factual the way it was shot, but one has to revise this by the end. The acting was pretty good. I think they laid on the tragic mood a little heavily towards the end but that's a matter of taste.