Three stars. Rating: R, and rather harshly, for mild sexuality and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.30.12
Artistic vision is captivating —
or clever — to the point at which it calls too much attention to itself, and
interferes with the story.
In effect, the tail then wags the
dog; we’re too frequently aware of the artifice, at the expense of plot and
character development. Empathy and identification become difficult, if not
impossible.
Director Joe Wright’s handling of
Leo Tolstoy’s venerable Anna Karenina is radiant and ferociously inventive,
thanks to Seamus McGarvey’s luminescent cinematography and, most notably, Sarah
Greenwood’s brilliant production design. The film is a thing of great artistic
beauty, and we cannot help being enchanted — initially — by its sheer, magnificent
theatricality.
But the artifice soon becomes
tiresome, which exposes the oddly flat and vexingly mannered performances.
Celebrated playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard undoubtedly deserves equal
credit (or blame) for this vision; I’m disappointed, however, that this
abbreviated, heavily stylized handling of Tolstoy lacks the narrative snap and
sparkling dialogue that brought Stoppard a well-deserved Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love. (He also was nominated, along with Terry Gilliam and Charles
McKeown, for writing 1985’s Brazil.)
Indeed, despite all the
bosom-heaving melodrama present in Tolstoy’s novel, this newest adaptation of Anna Karenina is a curiously bloodless affair.
Wright’s approach best can be
described as a stylized blend of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (absent the
music), Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and the
popular stage farce Noises Off. Luhrmann’s flamboyant musical told its story
as the characters improbably broke into song; Greenaway’s saga unfolded as the
camera tracked horizontally, apparently seamlessly, between events taking place
in various settings ... as if characters wandered into and out of fully dressed
stages in half a dozen impossibly connected theaters.
Toss in Noises Off, for its
behind-the-scenes antics — the stuff we’re never supposed to see — and the
result is, well, fascinating. For a time.
The primary set piece, then, is a
once-beautiful but now decaying theater, intended to represent the aristocratic
rot of 1870s Russian high society; this building’s various sections, dressed
appropriately, serve as the story’s many locales. We find Anna (Keira
Knightley) and her husband, Karenin (Jude Law), at home in one corner of the
massive stage; as Anna — for example — exits the room, she wanders “backstage”
between curtains, scrim and backdrops, perhaps changing her wardrobe in order
to be properly garbed as she enters the setting for the next scene.
As an exercise in coordinated
activity, the result is breathtaking; I cannot imagine how much rehearsal was
required, to get everything and everybody to move just so at all the right
moments. But we also cannot help noticing the many and varied technical
demands, to make it all work, just as Alfred Hitchcock’s extended single-camera
takes in 1948’s Rope eventually overwhelmed the drama.
Every inch of this cavernous
space is used; sometimes characters ascend stairs to overhead catwalks,
suggesting a disquieting journey through Moscow’s seamier underbelly. Wright
takes a similarly whimsical approach to set elements: At one point, Anna and
her beloved young son Serozha (Oskar McNamara) play with a tabletop toy train,
which unexpectedly chugs through a wintry Russian countryside and then morphs
into the full-scale train that takes Anna on her fateful trip from St.
Petersburg to Moscow.
This shift is one of Wright’s
many teasing juxtapositions between claustrophobic, theatrical artifice and unexpectedly
spacious “real life,” and the transition can be jarring. After spending a great
chunk of time with characters in clearly staged settings, the vista will
suddenly open into (for example) the sweeping expanse of Russian countryside
and farmland ... for no apparent reason. Then, after a few scenes of what we
might call “conventional” cinematic storytelling, we’re back to the briskly
changing sets of that massive theater.
Are we impressed? Absolutely. But
are we moved?
Likely not.
The plot, then: Events are set in
motion when the gorgeous, privileged Anna travels to Moscow to help her
philandering brother, Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen), save his marriage to Dolly
(Kelly Macdonald). During the aforementioned train journey, Anna encounters
Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams), who is met at the Moscow station by her
son, Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a dashing cavalry officer.
Dolly is distraught, having been
humiliated one too many times by her promiscuous husband. Anna counsels
forbearance, citing family responsibilities, the deep ties of marital love, and
so forth: all the “reasons” that we know she’ll soon disregard herself.
By coincidence, Oblonsky is
entertaining his best friend, Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), a shy, sensitive
landowner with a crush on Dolly’s younger sister, Kitty (Alicia Vikander).
Levin proposes, but Kitty has eyes only for Vronsky ... who, in turn, ignores
her completely, having been smitten by lust-at-first-sight over Anna.
The feeling is mutual.
Anna cannot put Vronsky out of
her mind. Illicit thoughts give way to flowery declarations; a full-blown
affair results. The rest, we can anticipate (or we know, having read the book).
But this, finally, is where
Wright loses control of his film. Knightley’s take on Anna is incongruously
rash and improbably arrogant: much more the behavior of an emancipated 21st
century woman. But if her conduct seems unlikely, Law’s Karenin is even worse:
essentially dead from the neck up. Law’s foolishly naïve and laughably stoic
performance makes Karenin look and act like a block of granite ... and the
biggest idiot on earth.
We’re intended to believe that
Karenin wants to trust and believe in his wife, but Law makes the man seem
dense and uncaring. Things become even sillier when Anna, gravely ill, insists
that the two men now in her life come to some sort of “understanding.” Nobody in
the room can pull off this scene — not Knightley, Law or Taylor-Johnson — and
the story never recovers, despite (because of?) the considerable weight of
additional melodramatic complications.
We’re far more emotionally
invested in Levin’s pursuit of the chagrined Kitty, who realizes that her
earlier treatment of this timid young man may have destroyed her only chance at
happiness. Vikander is warm and sympathetic, with the fresh glow of youth; we also
adore Kitty, just as we grow to despise Anna. Gleeson, similarly, makes Levin
an honest and honorable suitor.
(Stoppard’s script pays brief lip
service to class structure when Levin returns to his estate in Polrovskoe,
where his farmhands express surprise at how their master likes to work the
field alongside them. But this real-world commentary is so out of place in this
otherwise stylized production, that it sounds like an ill-advised
afterthought.)
A film’s balance is off when its
secondary characters pull focus from its stars. I recall being bothered by the
same problem in Out of Africa, where the sidebar characters played by Michael
Kitchen and Suzanna Hamilton were far more interesting, at all times, than
Robert Redford and Meryl Streep.
Nor do Knightley and Law lose
this battle merely to Vikander and Gleeson. Macfadyen’s Oblonsky is the only
actor to deliver the theatrical flourish that this mannered production demands;
the film bursts into sparkling life every time he’s on camera, and his line
deliveries are delightful. He almost makes infidelity sound reasonable.
Macdonald’s Dolly, as well, makes
the most of her few scenes. We’re left with the unmistakable conclusion that
Macfadyen, Macdonald, Gleeson and Vikander are simply better actors than
Knightley, Law and Taylor-Johnson.
Wright has a history of inventive
filmmaking, albeit always (until now) in moderation. I love the way his camera
follows different revelers during a party in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, and the lengthy, single-take camera shot that depicts the British retreat from
Dunkirk, in Atonement, is simply astonishing.
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