‘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.