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Film on the Internet: Anna Karenina (2012)

Posted By Julius Kassendorf on November 16, 2015 in News | 73 Responses

In 2005, Joe Wright exploded onto the silver screen with a new adaptation of the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. Displaying his previous training on music videos, Pride and Prejudice revitalized the traditional stuffed-shirt story with a youthful vigor through modern and assured direction.

Wright’s 2012 adaptation of Anna Karenina was an even more radical depiction of a story about historical royalty, romance and politics. Written by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Brazil, Shakespeare in Love), this version of Anna Karenina chops through an 8-part nearly-1000 page novel of in just over 2 hours. For a normal director, a tale of a sexually active woman who is torn between multiple lovers in a country torn between two political and moral eras with two different landscapes would be more than enough to chew on on its own. Not satisfied with a straight adaptation, Wright turns the film into a meta-jewelbox stage to smooth over the cracks left by leaving huge chunks of the novel on the floor (as required by cinematic limitations).

In many many ways, Anna Karenina is not a great adaptation of a long novel that encompasses the word epic. In the unkindest cut, Anna seems almost to be reinterpreted as a woman who could not make a decision to save her life. Yet, there’s something fascinating about Anna Karenina and its purposeful staginess and how it differentiates between the thematic divides of the film. Wright makes divisions between the over-the-top material majesty of elite parties and abject poverty of country citizens, the realist dreams of the working poor and the phony drama of the ultra-privileged, and the different ways men can manipulate a woman at the center of it all. Stoppard’s dialogue dances a high wire act that drives the movie through its many themes, and Kiera Knightly does her usual amazing work through a complex character trimmed down.

Anna Karenina streams on Netflix.

Posted in News | Tagged 2012, Anna Karenina, drama, Film on the Television, Joe Wright

About the Author

Julius Kassendorf

Julius Kassendorf is the founder of The-Solute, and previously founded The Other FIlms and Project Runaways in 2013. There, he dabbled in form within reviews to better textualize thought processes about the medium of film.

Previously, he has blogged at other, now-defunct, websites that you probably haven’t heard of, and had a boyfriend in Canada for many years. Julius resides in Seattle, where he enjoys the full life of the Seattle Film Community.

Julius’ commanding rule about film: Don’t Be Common. He believes the worst thing in the world is for a film to be like every other film, with a secondary crime of being a film with little to no ambition.

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