‘Atonement’

For examples of beloved books that were half destroyed by the movies, one need look no further than “Pride & Prejudice,” the 2005 film that starred Keira Knightley. So it is something of a pleasant shock to find that the same star and that film’s director, Joe Wright, have turned “Atonement” into one of the few adaptations that gives a splendid novel (written by Ian McEwan) the film it deserves. An assured and deeply moving work, “Atonement,” which opened Friday, is at once one of the most affecting of contemporary love stories and a potent meditation on the power of fiction to destroy and create, to divide and possibly heal.