Anna Karenina (2012)

Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is one of those great pieces of literature that is so dramatic and famous that it translates a little too easily to the screen. Joe Wright’s new film version of the epic novel is the eighth movie adaptation, and probably the most unique of all. At first glance, it may seem unnecessary for so many revisits to the same territory. It’s like there’s a list somewhere of all the costume dramas that are expected to stay in circulation and someone must make one or two every year. In most cases, I would agree that all the retread is silly, but Wright has entered the scene with a great sense of purpose. His movies, which have included an enjoyable but typical retread of Pride and Prejudice, are usually very theatrical in style and realistic in delivery. With this new picture, he goes somewhere beyond theatricality and creates a cinematic world like nothing you’re likely to see elsewhere. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s truly stunning.

The film opens on a bare wooden stage. The curtain opens and we see Keira Knightley and Jude Law getting all dressed up and rehearsing their lines. They are, as best as I can tell, preparing for their own life, delivering the film’s lines as if they were reality, while stagehands suddenly appear to change the set around them and musicians wander about playing the score. There are times when all of the action takes place on a cramped stage area and at others, it expands to enormous real-life locales and sets that are still just fake enough to remind you that it is all a production. Some characters leave the stage, some scenes take place in the rafters, some characters are part of the audience, and other times there is no audience at all. It is difficult to properly describe how the movie plays out, since it is sometimes like a musical with no singing and is sometimes so real you forget it isn’t. This presentation is so unique and interesting that the movie is endlessly captivating. What it does to the story, though, is another matter.

I don’t have a problem with the way the film is handled. Anna Karenina is a story suited to theatricality, with all its infidelity, jealousy, remorse and suicide. I think just about everyone knows how the story plays out and if they don’t, they can probably guess. That’s not undermining the source, just pointing out its massive influence. I think Wright was smart in determining that drawing an audience into yet another film version of this story would be relatively futile, but I don’t think he should have abandoned its emotional drive entirely. Knightley is one of the best Annas I’ve seen. She gives the role a power and soul that the rest of the movie is lacking. The whole picture is so caught up in its incredible use of style that it never made me feel anything for the characters or their predicaments. Knightley was good enough that the scenes of great tragedy came very close to working, but every time a scene begins promisingly, Wright swoops back in and makes it all crazy. The famous ending especially suffers, robbed of all intensity because its set-up is so distractingly bizarre.

So, the format is a blessing because it gives the movie purpose and makes it worth watching, but it is a curse because it all but destroys the very thing it sets out to create. The movie sells itself with its incredible design; the elaborate sets and costumes are enough alone to entice fans of period films and the acclaimed score by Dario Marianelli is fun and frivolous. Indeed, this Anna Karenina is thoroughly fun and frivolous, and just about anybody who watches it will be intrigued and amazed. Just don’t expect to actually care.

7/10