by JOANNE LAURIER
Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright, screenplay by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy; Starlet, directed by Sean Baker, screenplay by Baker and Chris Bergoch
British filmmaker Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is the latest cinematic adaption of the classic novel, published in installments from 1873 to 1877, by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).
Collaborating with playwright-scriptwriter Tom Stoppard, Wright ( Pride and Prejudice [2005], Atonement [2007]), in an unusual twist, has chosen to stage much of the film’s action under the proscenium arch of a gas-lit theater.
In late 19th century Russia, Tolstoy’s heroine Anna Karenina (Keira Knightley) is married to pompous tsarist government official Karenin (Jude Law). As the film opens, Anna has been called to Moscow from her home in St. Petersburg by her brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen), whose marriage to Dolly (Kelly Macdonald) is in crisis due to his chronic philandering. On the night train, Anna meets Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams), and soon after, her son, the dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
The thunder-bolt attraction between Anna and Vronsky leads to an illicit affair, its intensity a measure of the former’s previous deep unhappiness and emotional suffocation. When she leaves Karenin for her lover, Anna becomes a social pariah. This fate differs markedly from that of her brother, who suffers only minor repercussions for his libertinage. And, despite his extra-marital liaison, Vronsky is able to move freely in Russian society, while Anna remains isolated and shunned, a dynamic that has tragic consequences.
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In seeking to explain his artistic decisions, the filmmaker says in an interview that “the action would be taking place within a beautiful decaying theatre, which in itself would be omnipresent, a metaphor for a society of the time as it rotted from the inside.” (Apparently, it took some convincing to bring Stoppard on board with Wright’s vision.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGLRO3fZnQ
However, Russian society was not just decaying, it was also moving headlong towards a cataclysm, a fact artistically anticipated by Tolstoy. In a 1908 article (“Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution”), Lenin described the great writer as offering protests against “social falsehood and hypocrisy,” “merciless criticism of capitalist exploitation” and the “unmasking of the profound contradictions between the growth of wealth and achievements of civilization and the growth of poverty, degradation and misery among the masses.”
Lenin also refers to Tolstoy’s weak side, his role as “the crackpot preaching of submission, ‘resist not evil’ with violence” and promoter “of one of the most odious things on earth, namely, religion.”
Unfortunately, the film treats the novel and its events ahistorically and therefore neither Tolstoy’s strengths nor his weaknesses are essentially considered—or understood—by the filmmakers.
Instead, Wright, together with a number of film critics, proclaims that Tolstoy’s major theme in Anna Karenina is love. Speaking about the character Levin, Wright says: “I think he’s the character in the end who kinda gets it right, and therefore he’s the character that I aspire to … I find bits of me in all of them. Anna confuses that initial sexual love for being true love; well, I’ve done that. And like Oblonsky, I’ve been greedy with love. And also like Karenin, I’ve been the cuckold in love. So I think it’s an expression of many different sides of us.” The film’s flamboyant design cannot conceal the threadbare and, frankly, self-involved character of these conceptions.
Wright’s interpretation has little to do with Tolstoy. If there is a connection, it is only to secondary or tertiary aspects of the book. In fact, the director employs a good deal of film bombast to cover up the limitations of his views. This perhaps accounts for the fact that although the actors try hard and bring to bear considerable talent and skill, no characterization is genuinely full-dimensional or Tolstoyesque.
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