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Movie Review: Anna Karenina

Gregory Fichter

Even if it were not for Keira Knightley’s odd facial tics and total lack of intensity, Joe Wright’s lavishly-staged adaptation of Tolstoy’s Russian literature cornerstone Anna Karenina would still play like the tragic romance Oprah Winfrey thought she selected for her book club and made an unlikely 21st century bestseller.

Gone are the long passages concerning the young, ascetic farmer Levi – Tolstoy’s stand-in for his eventual radical Christian retreat from fame into rural seclusion. Instead, Atonement and Pride & Prejudice helmer Wright miscasts his muse Miss Knightley in a sad and swirling love story with little interest in getting the true feel of nineteenth century Russian social life right. No one speaks with the proper accent, forsaking the cultural music of the thick Russian dialect for English accents that sound airy and uncommitted; prim performers glide through the elaborate sets Wright’s team has created to meet his Baz Luhrman-ish vision of setting the entire piece as a theatrical performance – an ambitious approach that highlights the weakest aspects of Tolstoy’s epic.

Far too many characters and events appear in the book to be invited to Wright’s film, so the task of editing Tolstoy’s beast falls to award-magnet playwrite/screenwriter Tom Stoppard to tame the story and engage today’s viewer with some of that old Shakespeare in Love magic. But, there is little humor to work with and two very different romances happening in Anna Karenina – that of Anna’s adulterous love for the dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Levin’s timid courtship of young socialite Kitty (Alicia Vikander). Wright’s theater roundabout setup and Stoppard’s quick pacing pack information that is meant to be savored into a film that takes a little while to find its footing after the numerous introduction scenes – brisk visits to ballrooms and estates that become a blur in the crucial first twenty minutes.

I wouldn’t recommend this version as a Cliff’s Notes primer in lieu of reading the book (surely there are more exhaustive adaptations) though the key basic plots and relationships remain intact. Anna is the restless young bride of the aristocratic Karenin (Jude Law, increasingly resembling Sting) escaping her dull life in sensual trysts with the equally young Count Vronsky – a hollow affair on the page made positively generic on the screen. At the heart of it, the knotty romantic exploits of fading 19th century nobility are not relatable to modern audiences inured to old-fashioned melodrama with stakes far too tame to impress contemporary thirsts. Even the famed tragedy which befalls one of the characters leaves little impact in this new version.

Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in “Anna Karenina.” Photo by Laurie Sparham – © 2012 – Focus Features.

Inside Wright’s meticulous shadowbox, the theater setting provides a few real thrills – snowbound locomotives, ball scenes in the tradition of Luchino Visconti, and especially the centerpiece disastrous horse race which is staged with real horses violently tumbling off the stage and seemingly off the screen – the sequence provides momentary relief from the disengaged pageantry in place of passion that makes most of Anna Karenina circa 2012 a sumptuous but conservative shop window populated by carefully positioned mannequins.

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Gregory Fichter

Greg toiled for years in the hallowed bowels of the legendary Thomas Video and has studied cinema as part of the Concentration for Film Studies and Aesthetics at Oakland University. He has hosted the cult movie night "Celluloid Sundays" at The Belmont in Hamtramck, MI. and enjoys everything from High Trash to Low Art.

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