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Style takes centre stage in Wright’s theatrical film, says Alison Rowat
DESPITE the acres of fur on display in Anna Karenina one trusts, given modern sensibilities, that no animals were harmed in the making of the film. As for set designers and stylists, they probably weren't as fortunate. Such is the amount of finery and frou-frou in Joe Wright's picture, they must have been dropping like Prada-clad flies from exhaustion.
Then again, one expects an effort to be made for Tolstoy's heroine. She is, after all, one of the great female characters in literature, and many an actress – Garbo and Vivien Leigh foremost among them – has rushed to play the part on screen. Here, the damsel in emotional distress is Keira Knightley.
While she performs valiantly in the part, as does Jude Law as the cuckolded husband, Wright's desire to play up the story's theatricality gives his picture a stagey air that might not be to everyone's taste.
The picture looks stunning, with scene upon scene calling for a fresh superlative. Tom Stoppard's screenplay, too, is spare but vivid, bringing a modern spark to the period tale. Neither performances nor screenplay, however, can quite match the sheer volume of style on show. Impressive as it is, what first enhances and amazes later becomes a drag on a tale that should race along like tragic Anna's troubled mind. But hold on to the thought of all that gorgeousness, however, because Wright, as admirers of his Pride and Prejudice and Atonement will know, can put on a quite a show. When Wright gets it right, matching spectacle to moment, the effect is magical.
See more of Keira Knightley's costumes here
Despite it being Imperial Russia, 1874, the main cast have pukka English accents, even oor ain Kelly Macdonald, playing Dolly, Anna's sister-in-law. It is a wise move. With any Tolstoy adaptation there's enough to do dealing with the large cast of characters without the added distraction of thick as borscht accents. It is during a visit to Dolly in Moscow from her home in St Petersburg that Anna first meets Count Vronsky (Aaron Johnson), the man who will eventually become her lover. The meeting happens at a train station, allowing Wright the first of many opportunities to deploy trains as a metaphor. It's like wandering into a Russian remake of Thomas the Tank Engine, such is the amount of steam and clatter of wheels at times.
Anna has come to tell her sister-in-law not to give up on marriage because of her husband's infidelity. Anna's own husband takes a dim view of the situation, declaring that "sin has a price". The stage is thus set to test that idea.
Wright uses an actual stage to play out key parts of the story. When scenes change they do so not in the blink of a camera eye but with people and objects changing places, as if in a play. Again, it's a neat device even if it is overdone. When that happens, the picture feels more like Baz Luhrmann's Anna Karenina than Joe Wright's.
In the Vronsky-Anna-husband triangle, Law and Knightley are the strongest elements. Johnson, with his blonde, curly hair and pink, curled lips, looks too young and gauche to be the kind of man for whom a woman would risk all. The show here belongs to Law and Knightley, the fire and ice of the story, he with his chilly demands, Anna giving in to her desires.
Stoppard's screenplay is not afraid to add another strand to the Anna story. What at first seems a distraction ultimately underpins the whole movie. Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) is a friend of Anna's brother. A Tolstoyian stalwart, he is a wealthy landowner who finds nobility in working alongside his serfs at harvest time. Levin worships God and the idea of marriage, his simple nature and plain desires standing in contrast to Anna and Vronsky's debauchery. Gleeson (son of Brendan Gleeson, and seen most recently in Shadow Dancer), is outstanding, near stealing the picture from the bigger names.
The screenplay falls down when it comes to the basic matter of Anna's son and his importance in the grand scheme of things. He barely gets a mention for the first half of the film. It is this kind of detail that pulls a viewer into the story and keeps them there, but like so many others it is lost amid the rush for fabulousness.
Central to that fabulousness is Knightley, whose classically beautiful face is perfect for the part of Anna. Knightley is at the centre of the film's best scenes, as when Anna first dances with Vronsky or dares to show her face in society after the scandal breaks. There is no British director quite as ambitious as Wright when it comes to the set piece scene. Given a tale told so often before he has dared to be different, and for that he should be commended even if, like his heroine, he ultimately gives too much.
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