Anna Karenina: Too artsy for its own good?
When you go to a film based on a classic of
Russian literature and end up seeing a highly stylized homage to theater with many of the scenes actually taking place on a stage with painted backgrounds, it’s off putting. There’s a lot of stylized hand movements and balletic gestures that become beautiful in themselves. But my mind wandered. I kept worrying about whether or not Keira Knightley (Anna) was anorexic. Jude law (Alexandrovnich Karenin) was convincing as Anna’s tradition-bound husband and Count Vronsky (Aaron Johnson) was certainly a guy who could topple a virtuous woman’s resolve. But all the “artsiness” got in the way of the simple story of a married woman who has to give up the son she adores and all rights to see him when she divorces her husband. She’s so miserable and guilty that she can’t even enjoy the daughter she has by Vronsky. Because society rejects her, she has no outlet. Isolated at home, she obsesses about Vronsky with other woman, which drives him away. When Anna finds out that Vronsky is planning to marry a young lady who lives next door to his mother. Anna throws herself under a train. And if we didn’t know that from having already read the book, we’re treated to the foreshadowing of screeching railroad scenes that are as loud as the commercials before the film. I walked away visually delighted, but emotionally starved. (As hungry as Keira Knightley?)
December 3, 2012 @ 1:41 pm
I love reading your reviews. You bring in so many interesting aspects that help me to see a film with new eyes.