Along with many great writers including Balzac,
Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, and Turgenev, Russian
author Leo Tosltoy has a reputation for realist
fiction, an attention to the mundane, to the
experiences of every day life as opposed to a
highly stylized or romantic approach. This
realist approach is disregarded, however, by
director Joe Wright's flamboyant and glitzy
re-imagining of Tolstoy's epic novel Anna
Karenina. It is the eleventh such version of
this novel on film and one that adds little to
our understanding or appreciation of this great
work.
Contrary to Tolstoy's literary realism, the
production is marked by heavily choreographed
movements and theatrical accoutrements such as
painted background sets and whirling bodies, all
played out on a stage in an ornate but decaying
theater, a vague metaphor for the growing
rottenness of the aristocracy. Although
locations are changed through altering the
backgrounds, the device serves to reinforce the
unreal nature of what we are seeing and
distances us from the emotions of the unfolding
story.
Set in Russia in the late 1800s, Anna Karenina,
portrayed by British actress Keira Knightley, is
the wife of Karenin (Jude Law), a rigid and
humorless Tsarist government official. As Anna
leaves on the night train for Moscow as a result
of a crisis in her brother Oblonsky's (Matthew
Macfadyen) marriage to Dolly (Kelly Macdonald),
she meets Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams) and
her son, Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a
young cavalry officer. The chance meeting of
Anna and Vronsky leads to a relationship that
threatens her marriage with Karenin and results
in her being isolated and ostracized from
aristocratic society. Vronsky's movements in
Russian society, however, have no such
restrictions.
A parallel story, prominent in the novel, but
deemphasized in the film, is that of wealthy
landowner Levin's (Domhnall Gleeson) pursuit of
Dolly's sister Kitty (Alicia Vikander). This
relationship, grounded in simplicity and mutual
support, stands in contrast to the messy
liaisons of the upper classes. A highlight of
the film is the charming scene in which Levin
woos Kitty after her initial rejection by
communicating with her through the movement of
block letters on a table. While Anna has made
mistakes of judgment, she has acted according to
her own heart and to her privilege as a woman,
but this aspect is underplayed in the film.
Rather, her emotional deterioration is depicted
as based mainly on her weaknesses - her
inability to handle the rejection of her
husband, her doubts about Vronsky's commitment,
and her dismay at being shunned by her own
social class. While the basic outline of
Tolstoy's novel is present, the overriding
message is buried beneath a stagy presentation
and the wooden performances of painfully miscast
actors. Indeed, Anna Karenina is more about
infidelity than about the crumbling of the old
order, a breakdown that would eventually lead to
revolution.
After he returned from the army and witnessed
how the military was used to suppress the
peasants demands for better conditions, Tolstoy
became moved by a sense of social justice and a
feeling of disgust at his own connection to the
privileged elite, but, even though the
aristocrats are depicted as hypocritical and
often mean-spirited, very little of this social
conscience is seen in the film. As a result, a
powerful tragedy becomes passionless and
uninvolving, and the breadth and depth of a
great literary work of art is reduced to
artifice.
GRADE: C
