Point Form Review: Anna Karenina (2012)

Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, 2012)

-most notable is the stunning production design: the film's diegesis is a strange, wonderful mixture of a theatrical stage with ever-morphing and sometimes impossible set changes, along with the Russian wilderness behind -- space and time are splintered, mimicking the burgeoning changes of modernity
-the artifice of the theatre mimics social performance, a most pressing notion in Tolstoy's novel
-bitingly ironic, almost cruel in its tragedy; the tragedy that is love, sin, desire
-the first hour features incredible editing and a wickedly flamboyant pace
-sets up a nature vs. theatre dynamic: Anna is associated mostly with the interior, with escapes to the outside world where she is surrounded by a peaceful, loving nature; whats-his-face finds finds solace in the fields, but is constantly drawn to the chaos of the urban. The decision we face is whether we abandon (modern) society for a doomed utopia (a rural world that is being eaten up, being oppressed, and potentially excruciatingly lonely), or whether we brave the simultaneously judgemental and aloof gazes of a modern, urban, capitalist Society with its unwritten but strict "rules".
-the cruelty of a distant God: we are but puppets on a string, but the string is constantly breaking and shifting and our stage is fracturing
-love is both destructive and healing; will God punish those that give into love? Or does it depend on what kind of love?
-incredible score: an old-fashioned romantic violin motif runs throughout, like a classical Hollywood melodrama: in fact, much of the film seems to be in the vein of a Sirkian irony, where all the sumptuous design, colours, costumes and complicated dynamics of the plot become 'too much' and unstable -- revealing its biting, almost cruel, vision of romance. Is this style over substance, as many critics have charged? I don't think so, because it seems to me that the hyperbolic style enhances Tolstoy's underpinnings. I love a good straight-forward costume drama, too --take The Last Station-- but we've already seen these kind of adaptations of Anna Karenina before.
-Wright and screenwriter Stoppard have taken some big chances here. They don't always work, but I love when filmmakers attempt the gutsy.