Anna Karenina

There can be no peace for us. 

Only misery, and the greatest happiness. 

Source: mmorrow

Allow me to preface this post by telling you a little about my relationship with Anna Karenina. We first met at a bookstore just before Christmas in 2006, when I had just turned fifteen. Sadly, I had to leave her there though, but we were quickly reunited on Christmas Day by my parents. I took her with my to school on library reading day, and my adorable English teacher was very impressed that I knew her. A couple of weeks later my teacher passed away and I couldn't bear to see Anna anymore. It was years before I saw her again. This year, actually. I am particularly fond on Keira Knightley and my heart will always belong to Aaron Taylor-Johnson so when I heard they were to be the stars of Joe Wright's adaptation, I felt I could no longer shun Anna. 
I devoured the rest of the book in a matter of days. 

All that said, I don't want to spend my time comparing the movie to the book constantly, but I feel like the book had a major impact on how I viewed the movie, as I'm sure it did for many other viewers. 

What gets people really talking about this movie are two main things. Firstly, the costumes and secondly, the setting. It's easy to see why the costumes are a main talking point. It's simply because they are stunning. Jacqueline Durran has done it again (she's the one we have to thank for that green dress in Atonement) with her exquisite costumes, taking inspiration from 1950's France and putting it into the 1870's Russia. Somehow it works. It's no wonder she won the BAFTA just last Monday, and here's hoping she finally wins that Academy Award she's been nominated for. There are so many stunning costumes that I cannot choose my favourite (please don't make me!) although the black ball gown Anna wears when she first dances with Vronsky is certainly a standout. There is also one that I loved simply because it seemed to be the only one that was a more "typical" Russian dress of that period that any of the others. 

Talking about the costumes was the easy part - I don't think anyone can say the costumes aren't magnificent. The hard part is the setting. For those of you who don't know, the movie is set in a theatre and much of the actors movements are like they are performing a ballet. To be extremely dull and boring, I have to tell you that I still have not made up my mind whether I liked it or not. I love the boldness of the idea and in many of the scenes it worked perfectly (I particularly loved it in Stiva's scenes). My best friend, who I went to see it with, said she felt the theatre/stage setting worked because it made her think that all the people who were in Russia's "high society" were just putting on an act. I loved that thought. I've heard that many others found it distracting and sometimes confusing, but I didn't get that. I liked that it  added theatricality to the story, and was more in depth than just recounting the story of Anna, because lets face it, that's been done before. At times I felt it was reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), with some characters and scenes overly melodramatic and the settings so richly decorated. My slight problem with it was that sometimes it was crystal clear that you were in a theatre (such as Vronsky's race scene or when Anna humiliates herself at the opera) while others there was no suggestion of it at all, and it was as though there was no theatre and there never had been. Perhaps I've missed something and I will spot it when I watch the dvd, but it was not obvious to me on the first watch. 

  

The performances were all amazing, and it was lovely to see so many well known actors in it, including the lovely Ruth Wilson whose scenes I thoroughly enjoyed. For me the stand out was Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I felt that his performance of Vronsky was perfect. It's just as I imagined it. In many parts the film actually had me aching in the same sort of way Romeo and Juliet makes me ache. I know many people (in fact, probably the majority) don't believe that what Anna and Vronsky had was love, but rather lust, however I am not one of them. The movie, and especially Taylor-Johnson's performance, proved it all over again for me. This brings me to what I feel was the biggest let down and mistake of the movie. And it was not what they put in, but rather what they left out. ***SPOILER ALERT*** It also brings me back to the book again. In the novel, there is an small part at the end where it shows how Vronsky is dealing with Anna's death: simply, he is not. Even though a significant period of time has passed since, he himself is suicidal and it is obvious that he is not coping with her absence in his life. The movie did not even hint at this. There was no ending where Vronsky was shown. I could not believe it, and I think the movie suffered for it. It's one of the clear ways I know how much Vronsky loved Anna. 

Other than that, however, I thought the movie was a triumph. I am impatiently going to wait until the dvd is released and would definitely see it again in the cinema if asked. 

It's an 8 out of 10 from me.