Review of Anna Karenina (2012) by Tom S — 21 Jan 2013

Anna Karenina speeds through its threadbare 120 minutes so hastily that you wonder how screenwriter Tom Stoppard didn't pause for a moment and consider those two marvels of storytelling, character development and good pacing.

Whereas in the book we're provided intimacy with the eponym's characters so that her cuckolding becomes devastating, in this film we're hardly given a scene, and in anything that passes for a scene, dialogue is spat off like roaches in the actors' mouths.

It's essentially Cliff's Notes in celluloid form. Joe Wright's direction would be praiseworthy if it weren't so self-referential or even self-plagiarizing-from the dance-hall becoming solo-rehearsal to the rehiring of Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, the man is clearly starved for inspiration.

The film's only virtue is its design, but even that is dubious at best, looking just as Academy-Award-baiting as every other film nominated. The more you ponder it, the more insulting it seems-best not to see it at all.