Review of Anna Karenina (2012) by Sarfaraz A — 15 Feb 2013

Ok, I actually had extremely high hopes for Anna Karenina, especially since Joe Wright is one of my favourite directors (he directed my favourite movies Pride & Prejudice and Atonment), but I wasn't jumping up and down about this adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel.

Yes, production design and costume design is brilliant and elegant, and Wright's decision to situate the entire film on a theatre stage (as a metaphor for how Anna's scandal became cheap entertainment for the society) is bold and innovative; however, I felt that by doing so much in the creative department, Wright's flair for simple story-telling was sacrificed.

Editing was slow-paced at times, and I thought the movie could have been better with a trim of 10-15 mins. Keira Knightley is perfect as ever, in fact, all of the actors were well-cast. However, I just felt that had Joe Wright just told the story first, instead of focusing on the visual (as he had done on both Pride & Prejudice and Atonement), then this film would have been truer to the emotional core of the story.