Anna Karenina (2012)
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 130m
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Jude Law, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson
Synopsis:
In the 1870s, the wife of a St Petersburg minister conducts an affair with a dashing young cavalry officer, scandalising society, but leaving her brother's friend, Levin, free to pursue his own more chaste, but no more authentic, passion for the distracted Kitty.
Review:
The ironies and echoes of Tolstoy's rueful story of the heaven and hell that can be love are pressed into sharper relief in this rather theatrical version by Tom Stoppard. The high artifice that characterised parts of Atonement here reaches its apotheosis (hopefully) in Wright's meticulous mise-en-scène, where Shepperton interiors set in an operatic decor are alternated with breathtaking exteriors of Levin's estate and the liberating expansiveness of country life. Sequences such as the dance between Anna and Vronsky, and the meal between Oblonsky and Levin, are impeccably rehearsed and set to music, with scenery being slipped into place and actors frozen in mute poses or ushered off set. In short, a uniquely thoughtful Karenina, and a thing of beauty, if at times rather too poised for its own - and its characters' - good.
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 130m
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Jude Law, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson
Synopsis:
In the 1870s, the wife of a St Petersburg minister conducts an affair with a dashing young cavalry officer, scandalising society, but leaving her brother's friend, Levin, free to pursue his own more chaste, but no more authentic, passion for the distracted Kitty.
Review:
The ironies and echoes of Tolstoy's rueful story of the heaven and hell that can be love are pressed into sharper relief in this rather theatrical version by Tom Stoppard. The high artifice that characterised parts of Atonement here reaches its apotheosis (hopefully) in Wright's meticulous mise-en-scène, where Shepperton interiors set in an operatic decor are alternated with breathtaking exteriors of Levin's estate and the liberating expansiveness of country life. Sequences such as the dance between Anna and Vronsky, and the meal between Oblonsky and Levin, are impeccably rehearsed and set to music, with scenery being slipped into place and actors frozen in mute poses or ushered off set. In short, a uniquely thoughtful Karenina, and a thing of beauty, if at times rather too poised for its own - and its characters' - good.
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 130m
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Jude Law, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson
Synopsis:
In the 1870s, the wife of a St Petersburg minister conducts an affair with a dashing young cavalry officer, scandalising society, but leaving her brother's friend, Levin, free to pursue his own more chaste, but no more authentic, passion for the distracted Kitty.
Review:
The ironies and echoes of Tolstoy's rueful story of the heaven and hell that can be love are pressed into sharper relief in this rather theatrical version by Tom Stoppard. The high artifice that characterised parts of Atonement here reaches its apotheosis (hopefully) in Wright's meticulous mise-en-scène, where Shepperton interiors set in an operatic decor are alternated with breathtaking exteriors of Levin's estate and the liberating expansiveness of country life. Sequences such as the dance between Anna and Vronsky, and the meal between Oblonsky and Levin, are impeccably rehearsed and set to music, with scenery being slipped into place and actors frozen in mute poses or ushered off set. In short, a uniquely thoughtful Karenina, and a thing of beauty, if at times rather too poised for its own - and its characters' - good.