Many consider Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to be the greatest novel ever written. It's a complicated, sprawling novel filled with a variety of characters and dealing with quite a few psychological, cultural, social and political themes. It's not an easy matter to transfer this to a two-hour film.
Not that filmmakers haven't tried. This historical costume drama is the 13th attempt to capture it all on celluloid, this time the director being Joe Wright and the screenwriter none other than Tom Stoppard.
This movie is highly stylised and rather experimental in its approach. These unrealistic and stylised aspects were interesting, but they were unexpected and a little confusing. They didn't really work for me. I found it difficult to lose myself in the film. I felt the movie was too artificial and contrived. The whole movie felt choreographed. Perhaps it was too sophisticated for me.
I went to this movie to get reacquainted with the story, to be dazzled by the grandeur and strangeness of 19th c. Russia, to gain insights into the human condition, but most of all to be moved. However, I really only got the first of these.
The acting was good in the circumstances, but the character of Anna rather annoyed me. Vronsky did nothing for me. It didn't help that my friend disliked the movie to the point of walking out after less than an hour. It's hard to rate the film highly when that happens.
Not that filmmakers haven't tried. This historical costume drama is the 13th attempt to capture it all on celluloid, this time the director being Joe Wright and the screenwriter none other than Tom Stoppard.
This movie is highly stylised and rather experimental in its approach. These unrealistic and stylised aspects were interesting, but they were unexpected and a little confusing. They didn't really work for me. I found it difficult to lose myself in the film. I felt the movie was too artificial and contrived. The whole movie felt choreographed. Perhaps it was too sophisticated for me.
I went to this movie to get reacquainted with the story, to be dazzled by the grandeur and strangeness of 19th c. Russia, to gain insights into the human condition, but most of all to be moved. However, I really only got the first of these.
The acting was good in the circumstances, but the character of Anna rather annoyed me. Vronsky did nothing for me. It didn't help that my friend disliked the movie to the point of walking out after less than an hour. It's hard to rate the film highly when that happens.