Anna
Karenina won the game of Russian birth roulette. Born into privilege, she initially enjoyed
all the benefits of her well structured life, but lost everything due to a
reckless love affair. Such was the price
of offending Russian society at a time when it was trying to act French. Notions of
social role-playing have now inspired the hyper-stylization of Joe
Wright’s take on Tolstoy’s classic Anna
Karenina (trailer
here), which
opens this Friday in New York.
Everyone
is playing their socially expected role you see, so why not set Anna Karenina in a creaky old theater? From time to time, Wright will break away
from the stagey confines, particularly when checking in on Levin, the rustic
landowner and long suffering friend of Karenina’s ne’er do well brother. Of course, there are also trains, like the
one taking the title character to Moscow, where she hopes to provide emergency
marriage counseling for said brother and his justly aggrieved wife Dolly. It is sort of pleasant trip spent in the
company of the Countess Vronsky, whose cavalry officer son meets her at the
station.
The
mutual attraction between Karenina and Vronsky are immediately evident, only intensifying
at an eventful Moscow society ball.
Having thrown over the plodding Levin in hopes of landing Vronsky, Dolly’s
younger sister Kitty is deeply hurt when the officer ignores her in favor of
the married Karenina. Spooked by the
prospect of scandal, she hastens back to St. Petersburg and her husband
Karenin, a progressive but culturally traditional government official. As everyone should know, Vronsky follows her—and
so does scandal.
There
have been enough movie and television treatments to support a lengthy compare
and contrast session. In many ways, Tom
Stoppard’s adaptation is quite distinctive, establishing a strong contrast
between country simplicity and urban hypocrisy, while finally giving Levin his
due. However, Wright’s stylistic conceit
is far too distracting, taking viewers out of the story time and time
again. The theatrical device is not even
particularly original, having been used to greater effect in Manoel de Oliveira’s
Satin Slipper, Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street, and several
Shakespearean films. Frankly, it is a
rather baffling aesthetic choice, considering the whole appeal of a novel like Anna Karenina is the big messy sweeping
grandeur of it all.
Nonetheless,
there are several outstanding performances in Wright’s film, especially from
his lead, Keira Knightley. It is hard to
think of anyone else with the same brittle beauty and aristocratic bearing, who
can convey burning self-destructive passion and guilt-ridden anguish with comparable
power. Yet, the real surprise of Wright’s
Karenina is Jude Law’s performance as
Karenin, the wronged husband. Even
though he looks considerably younger than the Karenin described in the source
novel (about twenty years older than his wife), Law creates a deeply
sympathetic portrait of a fundamentally decent man, trying to act accordingly,
despite the painful embarrassment of the circumstances.
In
contrast, the casting of Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky is a
head-scratcher. In truth, Wright lets
his Vronsky off rather easily. In
previous versions, Vronsky is something of a shallow cad, but here he is more
or less a dumb kid who fell in love too young, but that creates a host of
dramatic problems. Essentially, Anna
Karenina is supposed to fall for Vronsky, because he is manlier than her
husband, not vice versa. What she sees
in this Vronsky is hard to fathom. I got
stuff in the fridge that looks older than Taylor-Johnson and I’m not ready to
throw it out yet.
Granted,
Wright’s visual approach lends itself to some dramatic transition shots, but it
never lets the film settle in and put down roots. Watching it makes one wonder what the
director had in mind. Perversely, it is
like Wright elicited award caliber performances from Knightley and Law, but then
deliberately undermined them the postmodern theatricality and a maddening case
of miscasting. There is room for some
experimentation when tackling Tolstoy, but it should serve the interests of the
picture. For instance, Sergei Solovyev’s
relatively recent Russian production of Anna Karenina was considerably more expressionistic than traditional costume
dramas, while staying true to the novel’s tone and story.
