Review of Anna Karenina (2012) by Tibor B — 21 Apr 2013

An intriguing adaptation by Joe Wright and Tom Stoppard, in which my personal lack of knowledge of Tolstoy could be both a blessing and a curse. To my fresh eyes, unbiased by the novel, the center of the story, which basically takes on the grand theme of "love" is a contrast between Karenina and Kitty.

Karenina has the lions share of the scenes, but the way the two girls approach love is interesting. Knightley plays Karenina initially as a bright bubbly, slightly naive socialite with a stable but distant husband who then falls into a lustful and selfish love affair with Vronsky and ends up destroying everything, including herself.

She's by and large unsympathetic. On the flip side is Kitty, who overcomes her teen crush on Vronsky, to compromise for Levin, a kind man who has shown her unwavering affection throughout. She shows kindness and compassion to Levin's sick brother, and seems to enjoy their simple, rural family life.

Unlike Anna, she can forget the temptation of exciting but shallow and fleeting high society flings, for something far more truthful. Wright's complex and constantly shifting theatrical settings are a very stylish conceit, but I never found it to get in the way of the narrative and they proved interesting metaphors for the gameplaying and 'acting out' within the aristocracy.

This is again nicely contrasted with the beautifully shot outdoor scenes on Levin's farm. For a film about such fundamental human instincts and feelings, it never quite grabbed me on an emotional level, perhaps slightly because of the stylisation and unsympathetic portrayals, but I do give credit to Wright for trying something a bit different and being bold enough to complicate our perception of the 'tragic' heroine.