I saw this film based on the Joe Wrights previously amazing film Atonement, a movie I did not like after my initial watching of it. In fact, I hate Atonement when I first saw it and thought it was rubbish, well upon further review I have come to absolutely love that film. It is an amazing thing to watch and I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it. It was Atonement that had me buy a ticket to see Anna Karenina, hoping to see something akin to the brilliance of Joe's Atonement. I knew it wouldn't, couldn't be another Atonement but I was hoping for something close. This was a massive swing and a miss by Joe Wright. He is a very competent and talented director and though he has that Martin Scorsese affliction of using the same people in all of his films, you can overlook that by what he puts on the screen, usually.
This time out he uses the talents of Keira Knightley to play Anna, she was in both Pride & Prejudice and Atonement. There's also hold over Matthew Mcfadyen who plays her brother, Jude Law who plays her husband Karenin, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson who was in Savages as the wife stealing Vronsky. The rest of the cast is comprised of other character actors who you may or may not recognize from other movies, they are just satellite characters in this movie. As for the performances of the actors, there's a lot of standing around and posing, it was hard to see any real "acting" going on but they were all dressed exquisitely. If you are no fan of Kiera Knightley then pass this movie right on by because she is practically in every scene. Her shooting schedule must have looked ridiculous. If you are a fan and find her fetching then you may want to see this movie twice (and buy the DVD when it becomes available).
Now when I said this movie was amazing to watch, I meant it and this is where Joe Wright gets major credit. The majority of the movie is filmed in a theater, which can lend to that feeling of claustrophobia but was expertly done. One second the actor is in an office and, with some deft camera work is in a restaurant the next. Your eyes continue to be played with throughout this film until you're almost dizzy but I suppose it was all done out of necessity since they story line has been told a million times before. Wife of a boring husband falls in love with an exciting and younger good looking man and falls in love. Woman is then ostracized from her friends and the circles in which she previously ran in with ease. She's degraded, called names, embarrassed, and ashamed to the point that she cannot take it anymore and does the unthinkable. Yawn...
This movie is obvious award bait and it reeked of pretension. The costumes were amazing though and costume designer Jacqueline Durran should be up for an award or two for her work as well as Sarah Greenwood for her production design. It wouldn't surprise me if cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, who has worked on previous Wright films and is doing the cinematography on the Godzilla reboot isn't up for some award himself. As will another holdover from the Joe Wright collection, composer and Oscar award winner Dario Marianelli. His score is lush, powerful, mournful, and moving. It rivals his award winning score to Atonement in my opinion though should it be nominated, I doubt it would win but it is masterful. Once you get past the costumes, the scenery, and the music though there really isn't much to this movie so like I stated earlier, unless you're a Keira Knightley fan, see something else and I'll see you at the theater.
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