Anna Karenina (2012)

Joe Wright, who directed this new version of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, has also directed Keira Knightley in two other movies, Pride & Prejudice and Atonement.  The story is about a married Russian worman who is caught up in a passionate love affair, and decides to give up her reputation and her family, including her beloved child for whom she would do anything for.

In this film, Wright uses heightened visual and artistic elements that suggest the characters are characters in a play, i.e. their fate is already written and their choices are not their own. Many of the scenes are visualized as sets on a stage, often revolving and changing as one would experience in a real play as the theatre would switch scenery while the audience continues to view. Often the shots go from indoors to outdoors with a simple removal of a wall.

Although I appreciated these artistic elements, I think it took away from the drama of the storyline and the building up of characters.  We get the basics of each character and their characteristics, their relationships to each other, and the general storyline, but I think for such a historical work, lots must have been set aside to devote time to these artistic elements.  Overall I am not fond of historical dramas as they often portray those of the upper class bemoaning the fact they can't find love and are forced to stay in loveless/arranged marriages. So devoting time to rendering these scene changes and things don't allow us to get into the story or really even the characters. As such, there is little originality to the story itself. And there is nothing really Russian at all, just a few jokes about cabbage soup and maybe some things about Russian bureaucracy or politics, but you could transplant this film to any other locale with little difference. I haven't read the book nor seen any other versions of the movie, but there is a subplot involving another girl (among many) whom Anna's lover was toying with at the beginning of the movie, whereas a more deserving young man pines away for her and eventually wins her. This subplot takes away from the main story although I can see why the girl needs to be introduced in order that we see Anna's lover's affections are fleeting until he meets Anna; again the time devoted to this subplot takes away from a movie called "Anna Karenina."

Overall the acting is good but I could have done with less of the subplot story, although it did show the girl becoming more mature and noble when she elects to take care of a sick relative, making her in her new lover's eyes more worthy and not just some silly girl. Perhaps this storyline is offered to juxtapose against Anna's predicament, who puts her own desires above others she has claimed to love deeply.