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[ ANNA KARENINA opens in Cleveland on Friday November 30th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]
[ ANNA KARENINA opens in Cleveland on Friday November 30th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]
Review by Matt Finley
With about a dozen filmic adaptations
to its name, Leo Tolstoy’s classic 1877 novel, Anna
Karenina, is one of the most enduring and recounted stories of
modern literature. There’s no question as to why – the tale is
layered thick with an exultant, ridiculous mess of glorious GD human
emotion, from the most tragic throes of depression to white-hot
passion at its Crest-strips whitest.
Even so, with a story and
characters that have been so prolifically reprocessed into cathartic
cinema fodder, the unavoidably cynical question of any subsequent
retelling becomes, “Okay, Bub… so what’s yer
gimmick?”
In ANNA KARENINA, the newest
multiplex re-imagining of the tale from director Joe Wright
(ATONEMENT) and screenwriter Tom Stoppard (ROSENCRANTZ AND
GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD), the hook is a cozily worn-down English
theatre in which Wright shot a majority of the film, transforming, at
various times, the rigging into the back alleys of urban Moscow, the
stage into a racetrack, the floor into a ballroom, and the balcony
into, well, a balcony. But a different balcony. When used to its
fullest potential, the effect is an arresting, a kinetic swirl of
leads and extras, backdrops and scene changes - life in 19th century
Russia performed as an elaborate, narrative dance.
If it sounds pointlessly showy, don’t
worry. It’s anything but. Though the film starts with an
establishing flurry of set changes and half-danced character
introductions, once the story settles into a rhythm, so, too, does
Wright’s use of the space. As we meet Anna (Keira Knightley in her
third Wright outing), her steely husband Alexei (Jude Law) and the
dashing Count Vronsky (KICK-ASS’ Aaron Taylor-Johnson) – a
cavalryman and the passion-baiting object of Anna’s eventual
disgrace - the characters whirl around each other, the enclosed
theater space used to represent the insular nature of
Imperial Russian high society, with the measured choreography of
their movements invoking the prescribed codes of conduct and
etiquette that keep the elite waltzing through their lives in
mechanical, harmonized lockstep.
Amid several beautiful, heart-stopping
theatrical set pieces, including a ballroom gala and the
aforementioned horserace, we watch as Anna’s and Vronsky’s
affair draws the couple out of society and into
self-contained drawing rooms that recall more staid – though always
concisely furnished – sets of traditional period dramas. More than
that, when the two do emerge back into the wheeling fray of society,
Wright renders the effect marvelously, stalling and halting the
motion of the Russian elite in the wake of Anna’s unapologetic
indiscretions.
Flung amid the emotional tumult, the
cast fares well. More so even than the visual potential for
spectacle, KARENINA's stage play style confronts the actors
with an interesting challenge: the certainly out-sized emotional
pathos of Tolstoy’s writing is well suited to the heightened
movement and volume required of large-scale theater acting… and
yet, the entire business unfolds on the screen, and contains just as
many moments of intimate intensity as it does proscenium-echoing
grandiosity.
While Knightley and Taylor-Johnson do a
commendable job (they are, of course, tasked with the largest range
of feeling and action) it’s Jude Law’s performance as Karenina’s
slow-searing husband – all cold eyes and tortured moral superiority
– that really dazzles.
Along with the indoor sets, Wright also
filmed a spare number of wilderness scenes, most of them centered
around young Konstantin (Dohmnall Gleeson), who throws himself into
farming while pining endlessly for the love of the beautiful Princess
Betsy (Ruth Wilson).
Taken as grand theater of theme, the
three set-types – bustling theater, domestic confines and
wind-swept natural expanse – represent, respectively, the rigid
societal law, ardor-blinded human emotion, and bare, existential
truth (less superego, ego, and id than head, heart, and soul) with
which Karenina’s characters parry and grapple and cut themselves
bloody.
Like I said, not pointlessly showy. If
anything, the purposeful deployment of scenery and setting ultimately
makes the film feel almost as prim and measured as other more
boilerplate classical adaptations.
Going into ANNA KARENINA, I
feared that Wright might attempt to mimic the frantic incandescent
bombast of Baz Luhrmann’s ROMEO AND JULIET or the eccentric
bacchanalia of Julie Taymor’s TITUS – not because I
dislike those films, but because I respect Wright enough on his own
artistic terms that I want to see him elude simple comparisons.
For as well-crafted and considered as
KARENINA is, I almost felt that I could do with a little more
chaos – a bit more bombast or eccentricity. Wright’s
last film, HANNA, for example, pulsed with an irresistible
energy that managed to punch through Wright’s meticulous framing
and, along with the movie’s bizarrely heavy-handed fairy tale
imagery, create something as unapologetically flawed as it was
compellingly dynamic. ANNA KARENINA tries to capture the same
visual energy while maintaining the stalwart performance-driven
emotional core of his prior adaptations, ATONEMENT and PRIDE
AND PREJUDICE. And largely, it succeeds.
Really, my only complaint is that,
given all of Tolstoy’s emotionally hemorrhaging angels, wretches,
demons, and whores, this spunkier, livelier KARENINA is just
pristine enough to betray the fascinating mess it could have been. (3
out 4 Stars)
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