Anna Karenina (2012)

A visual feast--likely to get nominations for wardrobe, production design, and cinematography--this early 19th century story of infidelity, jealousy, and social status is something you need to see on the big screen. The performances aren't bad either. Keira Knightley (last in these pages in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) in the starring role lends the requisite amount of sweetness, ardor, and frustration (in the past I have agreed with a friend who said she didn't like Knightley for being too skinny, but I have come around); Jude Law (most recently in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) is properly starchy as her much older husband Karenin; and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (last in Savages, he has changed his name from Johnson as has his bride Sam Taylor-Johnson (she directed him in Nowhere Boy), who is 45 to his 22 years and bore his two daughters in the last two and a half years) tries his best to be smoldering as Count Vronsky with his pout and terrible blonde 'do (The New Yorker calls it "a disastrous wig" but the Daily Mail says it's dyed). Supporting work is contributed by Matthew Mcfadyen (Mr. Darcy to Knightley's Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice (2005) with Joe Wright also as director, Daniel in the original (English) Death at a Funeral (2007), and John Birt in Frost/Nixon, to name some of my favorites), Kelly Macdonald (my faves include her first feature Trainspotting (1996), Two Family House (2000), Gosford Park (2001), Intermission (2003), No Country for Old Men (2007), Choke, and, for HBO: The Girl in the Café (2005) and 36 episodes of Boardwalk Empire as Margaret Schroeder) as Anna's brother Oblonsky and sister-in-law Dolly respectively, Alicia Vikander as Dolly's sister Kitty, Domhnall Gleeson (I liked him in Never Let Me Go and True Grit, even though I neglected to mention him) as her paramour Levin, and others too numerous to list.

To complete my coiffure comments, Knightley's black dye job is also without luster, but Vikander, mostly a brunette in her imdb photos, looks radiant as a blonde, and Gleeson's is a lovely ginger.

Every ad for this movie says, "From Joe Wright, the director of Atonement and Pride & Prejudice." I guess not everyone loved last year's Hanna, also directed by Wright, as much as we did. The screenplay, by the much-awarded Tom Stoppard (Oscar winner for Shakespeare in Love (1998), nominated for Brazil (1985), Venice Film Festival Golden Lion for Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)--for which he won the Tony for the stage version (I didn't see either version, nor his other 3 Tony wins and 3 nominations)), and the direction are perhaps the weakest link. Having not read the novel, both Jack and I were surprised by the soapiness of the plot, from the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, considered a giant of Russian literature.

But oh! The wardrobe! Costume designer Jacqueline Durran's (Oscar-nominated for Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, nominated by her own guild for the latter, and won the BAFTA award for Vera Drake (2004)) sumptuous gowns and and complicated men's suits--in at least one scene Oblonsky changes coats several times to comic effect amid flying papers--are simply marvelous. I didn't remember, but I recognized Durran's work in the last sentence of my post on Happy-Go-Lucky, and she did the costumes for Another Year, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Wright's The Soloist as well.

And the sets/production design deserve their own paragraph. Before we went in I had read that the whole movie was shot on a stage. That's a slight exaggeration. But much of it is, including scenes with horses. Then, suddenly, it moves outdoors to massive fields covered in either snow or flowers, all the more dramatic after the confinement of the previous (here's an explanation with no spoilers). Production designer Sarah Greenwood and her crew (won their guild's award for Sherlock Holmes; Oscar-nominated for that and for Atonement and Pride & Prejudice; decorated Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, The Soloist, and Hanna) give us whimsical settings, some realistic, some not, all imaginative. Perhaps the director and screenwriter deserve a little credit.

Composer Dario Marianelli's (last blogged in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) moody symphonic score is, unusually, not my cup of borscht, other than the piano solos played by Marianelli himself. If he gets another Oscar nomination I'll be a bit disappointed. You can decide for yourself by listening to the whole thing here, until someone takes it down for copyright infringement.

Despite its shortcomings, you should see this for its magnificent images (props also to director of photography Seamus McGarvey (I loved The Winter Guest (1997), The Big Tease (1999), High Fidelity (2000), and The Hours (2002), among his many credits; he was also Oscar-nominated for Atonement). And in 130 minutes you can learn about this classic, the novel of which was much admired by such titans as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladmir Nabokov, and William Faulkner.