Anna Karenina | B-
Does
Tolstoy really matter anymore? Directors regularly attempt to plunder the great
master’s musty catalog, to reinvigorate his very particular brand of
pacifistic, moral asceticism for general popcorn audiences, who are most
commonly served the poison pill of thought beneath the candy-coated shell of a
good love story, among which the sweaty, love-drenched Anna Karenina certainly
ranks as one of the greats. The latest take on the doomed romance of poor dear
Anna is a visually stunning, audaciously arty attempt to overwhelm us with a
fury of technique and artifice, which may very well sweep viewers into its
florid world of forbidden desires, gloriously blustery Russian winters and
endless layers of bureaucratic frippery. Will the complicated social
imperatives and moral concerns of 19th century Russia remain relevant to 21st
century Americans? I ask because, after sitting through director Joe Wright’s
epic, bedazzling, and faintly numbing interpretation of the venerable favorite,
I’m not sure if the problem is the razzle-dazzle or the substance underneath
it.
More
often than not in recent years, Anna Karenina has been adapted into TV
serials, with multiple installments needed to properly contain the voluminous
novel’s many expansive side plots, philosophical musings and meandering
narrative. No such luck here, as the storytelling has been condensed into a
busy rush of incidents, sets and moments, like a hundred rapidly spinning
teacups hanging in the air.
Director
Joe Wright (Atonement) is less interested in Tolstoy’s fixations on
religious symbolism and the virtues of the simple agrarian lifestyle than he is
in delivering a good old bodice-ripper. We are left with the skeletal framework
of a doomed romance between married socialite Anna (Kiera Knightley) and the
dashing young officer Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a scandalous,
socially damming affair that leaves lives in ruin. The trouble is that Wright
and screenwriter Tom Stoppard have chosen to frame the whole thing inside a
theatrical device, in which most of the action occurs on a theatre stage, with
gorgeous sets and props whizzing by as the camera swoops in around and over the
players. When we get exterior scenes, they are deliberately artificial,
high-contrast pieces of showy design work, which impress but don’t invite. This
approach is inventive and intriguing, but it only adds distance between us and
the already somewhat formal and remote characters, who the actors try to force
into life.
Knightley
is Joe Wright’s go-to gal, having teamed up with him in Atonement and Pride
& Prejudice, but this may have been too many trips to the same well.
The preternaturally slim and porcelain Knightley does most of her acting with
her upper lip, which quivers wildly, as if she had an electric toothbrush
permanently buzzing over her gums. As Vronsky, the youthful Taylor-Johnson
(title character of Kick-Ass) is appropriately handsome but lacking
authority; he feels a bit out of place in a period piece, and seems to always
be looking for a cue card.
The
surprise is Jude Law, who has morphed from dashing leading man into playing
roles like the drab, bloodless Tsarist functionary Karenin, Anna’s cuckolded
but defiantly proud husband. Behind his thick, bristly beard, Law takes an
intentionally stiff, boring character and makes him vital and alive, a tricky
feat that seems just out of reach for everyone else involved.
For
all its creativity and cosmetic excitement, this new Anna seems to be
merely slapping a new facade on an old barn. There is just enough air between
the characters and our sense of reality to make their dilemmas about morality,
duty and status seem as quaintly antiquated and rare as a Faberge egg.
This article appears in Nov 21-27, 2012.