FILM with debbie lynn elias
For anyone who has braved a reading of the Tolstoy novel, at its core the story of Anna Karenina is first and foremost about families and love. Set in 1870’s Russia where aristocracy was still king but where industrialization was encroaching upon the insular nature of the Russian world. Part and parcel of that theme is the issue of love as each of the characters is looking for love, needing love, craving love and each has his or her own definition of what love is.
A wordsmith beyond compare, Tolstoy told a family story focusing on the changing times and taboos and the railing against the outdated doctrines of male supremacy by one woman, Anna Karenina. But she is also morally conflicted, undoubtedly arising from her marriage at 18 to a man 12 years her senior (Alexei Karenin) and 10 years later the need to spread her wings and “find her bliss” in the arms of another. Adding a touch of magic to the written word is the lyrical nature of Tolstoy’s construct – a lyricism that is finally (after 25 film versions and countless plays), thanks to director Joe Wright, beautifully translated to the screen under the guise of an operetta, the very nature of which has a musical ebb and flow that mirrors the story and whirling twirling emotional gravitas and beauty that is inherent to it, fueling the majesty and importance of the film in an historical context.
Thanks to Wright’s breathtaking and sumptuous visual creativity, Tom Stoppard’s keenly insightful and constructed screenplay and possibly the best performance of Keira Knightley’s career, Anna Karenina is easily the Best Picture of the Year and Knightley joins the very limited list of Best Actress Oscar contenders.
Taking us along on Anna’s roller coaster of emotions, Knightley shines brighter than any star in the heavens. With a look, a glance, a smile, we feel Anna’s joy and we feel her love. “Her moral culpability is constantly in question. I think she is held up to be condemned at certain points. I think she’s also held up to be loved and to be understood and to be sympathized with.” With every tear, every tight-lipped look, we feel her pain. Knightley emotionally transforms Anna and doesn’t miss a beat in so doing. The highs, the lows, the demons of guilt. She makes us feel. This is no gratuitous performance. This is a master class in emotion. She is so precise and so immersed in the story and character that when she gives Anna masks of false bravado or agreement in order to save her lifestyle, her relationship with her son or even get Alexei to take her back, we see the strain and falsehood of Anna’s lies and the almost kabuki porcelain immobility of the face, just waiting for emotion to crack it.
Knowing the efforts of those countless Anna’s that had come before her, I asked her what attracted her to the character and what was it about Wright’s vision that gave her the confidence that it was now her time to tackle Anna Karenina. “I read the book when I was about 19. . . Obviously, anyone would go, ‘gosh, golly that’s an amazing character.’ When Joe [Wright] phoned me up, I think we’d had a conversation about, when we were doing “Atonement”, great female roles and how few there are and we were trying to name them, Anna Karenina definitely came up within that conversation. He phoned me about two years ago when I was working on “A Dangerous Method” and he just went, ‘Anna Karenina?’ and I went, ‘Yep!’. And he went, ‘We’ll only do it if Tom Stoppard does the adaptation.’ and I went, ‘Okay.’ . . The script obviously wasn’t there yet so it was purely on the potential of what that story and that character and that collaboration could be.”
As Anna’s husband, Karenin, Jude Law is controlled perfection. He makes it easy to see why a young doe-eyed innocent as Anna was at 18 would want him as a husband. Law also gives the added element of maturity but stifled in time, trapping himself, the country and Anna in a gilded cage.
Kelly MacDonald brings a humanizing richness to Anna’s sister-in-law Dolly while Alicia Vikander makes younger sister Kitty the perfect spoiled little sister with a vixenous edge. Watching Vikander transform as Kitty matures and learns what love is, is captivating to watch. Similarly, watching Knightley’s Anna respond is equally impressive as the green-eyed monster rears its ugly head and emotional manipulation takes center stage. The driving force of love is what makes each character tick and the actors each capture the essence of their respective character’s definition of love, by their demeanor. Incredibly cohesive and surprising to see an entire cast on the same page.
Ruth Wilson is beyond delicious as the self-centered, trouble making, superficial Princess Betsy while Olivia Williams goes above and beyond as Countess Vronsky, relishing the subtext of the Countess’ motives. Emily Watson – hard but impassioned and passionate as Countess Lydia Ivanovna – plays a double-edged duality – staunch hypocritical devotion to the church while clearly lusting for Alexei Karenin.
This is one instance where it is the sum of the parts that are greater than the whole – the hallmark of an Oscar worthy Best Picture. Most notable is the importance of the female dynamic within the film and the specific character relationships, something which screenwriter Stoppard and the film’s actresses have deliciously brought to the forefront and to life. Clearly, Tolstoy loved women and their complexities.
The one casting disappointment is Aaron Taylor Johnson’s Vronsky. What woman in their right mind would be attracted to such a foppish dimwit. This is the one flaw in the film as Taylor-Johnson has no appeal whatsoever in the role. There is nothing remotely sexy or sensual about him and while I see fire smoldering from Knightley in her scenes with him, it’s all one sided. There is no heat, nothing at all that even hints at physical or emotional desire coming from Taylor-Johnson. He’s not even physically appealing in the least. Sadly, with the attraction and affair with another man as a core element of the story and film, we need a different actor to make the lust and love believable.
Creatively told and inspired in its structure, Stoppard gives life to Tolstoy’s words and makes these characters people whom we now know and would recognize on a street were we to meet. Even the minutest character is fleshed out either by dialogue, costume or scene placement so as to truly embolden the imagery and impact of the film as a whole. There is no superfluous dialogue and the dialogue itself, while relatable in the 21st century, is tonally structured so that it’s cadence is not only lyrical, but in keeping with the 1870’s. Interesting is that Stoppard’s script delivers an intimacy while retaining the majestic grandeur of the world in which the story is set and KEY – – the individuals never feel as if insignificant ants in the grand scheme of the changing world. The script feels as much a part of the 21st Century as it does the 19th Century.
Tom Stoppard and Joe wright have no bigger fan than Keira Knightley herself. “ When the script was first written and we first started talking about it, it was going to be a completely naturalistic telling. It didn’t turn into this stylized thing until 10 weeks before we started shooting when [Wright] phoned me up and said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you. . . We’re going to set it in a theater.’ If I’d been working with somebody I didn’t know, that would have been totally terrifying and the alarm bells would have been ringing. But I think because I do know him and we’ve worked together so many times and there is an implicit trust there, the reason I wanted to work with him at all on this was because he was never going to do something just straight. Even when you look at “Pride & Prejudice”…it was deeply naturalistic in that everybody was kind of a bit scruffy and the hemlines were a bit off and there was mud over everything. It was a very different telling. “Atonement” the same thing. It was the infamously unfilmable novel and he tackled that. So I always knew that there was going to be something else that he’d bring out of it. I didn’t quite expect it was going to be that.”
Wright uses extensive tonal use of of color in not only set design but costuming. Metaphoric and telling. Powerful is never seeing Anna in harlot red (and that was the one and only time she was in red – in the bathrobe at the window) until after her angelic appearance in gossamer white at the opera when she was ignored by all for publicly acknowledging her affair with Vronsky, leaving her child and moving in with him. The color contrast visually exposes the moral dilemma of Anna. Use of color is lush, rich and sumptuous and as much a storytelling tool throughout as the spoken word.
Anna Karenina. A Focus Features Release. Rated R. 130 mins.
Directed by: Joe Wright. Written by: Tom Stoppard
Cast: Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly MacDonald, Ruth Wilson, Emily Watson, Olivia Williams.
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