Review: Anna Karenina
On Saturday night I saw Anna Karenina. I had heard mixed reviews and was dubious about the much-talked-about staging, but I was curious and very interested to see the result at last, albeit so late in the season. Here’s what I thought …
Despite my misgivings, I was immediately captured and entranced by the opening scenes. Set on a nineteenth century proscenium arch stage, with the hustle and bustle of scene-changers and characters wandering about backstage and along the precarious wooden gantries above, this is a metaphor neatly dividing Moscow and St Petersburg in their two worlds of rich and poor, of artifice and harsh reality.
It was a well-made film, beautifully filmed and edited with mostly competent performances; visually and stylistically it was quite poetic. But even as I marvelled at its cleverness, I am not sure if the Joe Wright and Tom Stoppard were successful in distilling the essence of Tolstoy's book.
I questioned some of the casting: I was never convinced Keira Knightley was the best choice for the title role, and Jude Law seemed an unusual choice as Karenin (not to mention ironically inapt). However Aron Taylor-Johnson, playing Vronsky, seemed suitably vain and effeminate, not virile at all – though Law's castrated Karenin was virtually sexless. It was certainly a subtle portrayal by Law and drew great sympathy from me, but his Karenin did no justice to Anna and very little to cast her character in a flattering light. Karenin was a hard, unsympathetic man, many years Anna’s senior, but it was difficult to see him as anything more than hard-done-by. And Knightley’s Anna, overwhelmed by love and passion, did nothing to convey the anguish she suffered at the loss of her son, the torment of fearing she would lose Vronsky (which eventually unhinged her), and the depths of humiliation she suffered at society’s rejection of her. In effect, she was shallow and rather selfish.
In Tolstoy’s book, the sweet purity of Levin and Kitty's marriage is juxtaposed against the dishonourable nature of Anna and Count Vronsky's relationship (according to the mores of the day), but I do not think this was adequately conveyed to a modern audience – if even it could be judging by the reactions of some of the patrons in the cinema the night I saw the film. One of the tenderest scenes was played out between Levin and Kitty when they reveal their love for one another using alphabet blocks – including a very cute nod to modern texting parlance with the blocks spelling ‘ily’.
Although the stylised presentation of the story helped to truncate Tolstoy's book (and rationalise yet another production), occasionally there were jarring interludes – notably Levin's meetings with his brother – that made me wonder why they had been put in, because they were simply not adequately fleshed out.
The stage setting was utilised beautifully, from how sets were changed (backdrops, scenic art, doors opening on new scenes), to the use of space (the stage, backstage as well as the seating area), minor actors' roles seamlessly changing. The choreography and film editing was breathtaking in its perfection.
Sound – and silence – was used to great effect: clerks stamping paperwork in tune, the rapid beat of a fan in time with panicked breath and heart. The ball scene when Anna and Alexey dance for the first time was brilliantly portrayed, with Kitty changing partners as the lovers continually swirl around in the middle, deaf and blind to their surroundings – the set darkens and Anna and Vronsky dance alone in the darkness until they gradually return to the hubbub.
Joe Wright … has nevertheless created a a cornucopia of deilghts in this film of great beauty, rich detail and real originality.
The crowning achievement was the stylised staging of the horserace, with spectators sitting in the theatre seats before the stage, and only the sound of the horse’s hooves thundering in the darkness of ‘offstage’ hinting at reality.
This is a story of such scope it would be difficult for anyone to truly do it justice, and Joe Wright, though he has succeeded only in part, has nevertheless created a a cornucopia of deilghts in this film of great beauty, rich detail and real originality.
