From the creators of Pride and Prejudice (2005) comes one of the best-looking films since, well, Pride and Prejudice. Adapted from Tolstoy’s novel, which was recently named the greatest ever by Time magazine, Anna Karenina stars Keira Knightley and ... that guy from Kick-Ass.
The film tells the story of the eponymous Russian aristocrat (Knightley), who is married to a prominent politician (Jude Law) but embarks on an affair with Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a dashing cavalryman whose method of seduction is to follow Anna around and stare at her until she agrees to sleep with him. And yes, you read that correctly: Jude Law plays the boring, unattractive husband and Kick-Ass the dreamy stranger. Oh Jude, how times have changed.
There is very little chemistry between Knightley and Taylor-Johnson. The latter’s Count Vronsky is a highly unlikeable character, a horribly effete cad who spends most of the film’s first half lurking and smouldering, swishing his hands about and drawing seductively from a perpetually lit cigarette. An intensely homoerotic dance with a horse merely reinforces the suspicion that something might be fundamentally wrong with their relationship. Knightley on the other hand is fantastic, anchoring the film amid Joe Wright’s directorial frippery.
Wright’s signature long tracking shots are on display again, and some are a marvel of camerawork and choreography. The costumes and set design (which gives the look of a “filmed play”) are, to use a rather hackneyed term for which there are unfortunately very few substitutes, sumptuous. However, the film’s substance doesn’t match its undoubted style. The script is a bit weak and doesn’t tie the novel’s themes together as strongly as it could, and the character of the Count goes almost completely undeveloped; for some reason, male characters seem to be a recurring problem in Wright’s films.
On the whole, though, the film is well worth seeing; but be quick, its theatrical run is almost over.
3.5/5
