Anna Karenina (2012)

[sugarhigh]

I think the only Jude Law fits his role.

[stina]

I am just finishing the book now, and Keira Knightley is not how I pictured Anna at all. Anna may be younger than her husband, but she is still a woman. Tolstoj describes her as voluptous and as someone with great charisma. My brother said he pictured someone more like Lena Headey as Anna, and that has stuck in my head. Keira is just such a girl to me, I can't see her pulling this off.

Based in the trailer, Alicia Vikander looks perfect. Exactly how I imagined Kitty.

[ijustworkhere]

Since when is Lena Headey voluptuous? I mean, I love her and all, but I can imagine her for Anna less than I can imagine Keira.

After seeing Savages this weekend, I'm nervous about Aaron Johnson as Vronsky. While I loved him in Kick Ass, his voice and mannerisms are so geeky-high-school-stoner-dude, and I was hoping he'd be different years later, but he wasn't. So now I'm trying to picture Vronsky as a geeky high school stoner guy and it's not a good mental image. Hopefully the fact that he doesn't have to cover up his accent in this movie will help.

[stina]

Jul 12, 2012 11:54:43 GMT -4 ijustworkhere said:

Since when is Lena Headey voluptuous? I mean, I love her and all, but I can imagine her for Anna less than I can imagine Keira.

Sorry, I phrased that poorly. To me Lena is more of a woman than Keira is, that's not saying she is in any way voluptous. But in an industry where Scarlett Johansson is considered voloptous, there is no way that any actress that is true to Tolstoy's description of Anna would ever get the part. Based in that, Lena is more how I pictured Anna than Keira. Is all I was saying

[mochakitty]

It's been announced as part of the TIFF lineup.

+

New 6+ minute clip

Additional footage/behind-the-scenes clips at EW.com.

“The rules of a period film have been completely broken,” says Keira Knightley in this exclusive video about the new big-screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 classic, Anna Karenina (due Nov. 9). Knightley, in her third film for director Joe Wright (after 2005′s Pride and Prejudice and 2007′s Atonement) stars in the title role; Jude Law plays her aristocratic husband; and Aaron Taylor-Johnson portrays the cavalry officer with whom she falls into a passionate affair.

What makes this adaptation so unusual is Wright’s decision to set much of the action inside a theater.

Second poster

[Deleted]

Count me among those dubious about Aaron Johnson. He's just not...dashing. I'm still excited about it though.

[Deleted]

OK, saw a screening this morning. My sister also called in a bunch of favours to get me into the Q&A session with Joe Wright and the actors afterwards and I think I want to re-watch the film now that I know for sure what Wright was trying to achieve with it. I went in completely blind and expected a straightforward adaptation and it's definitely not that.

Wright shoots the whole thing as if it is a play happening on stage. So for example, Levin will be having dinner with Oblonsky on a restaurant set, will hear Kitty calling him off stage, then pull apart the scenery to be with her in the ballroom. Then Levin will leave the ballroom by climbing a ladder and suddenly be in his brother's apartment, but still able to peer down and see the world of Kitty below. The scenes are like something from a musical, where the extras all do things in perfect unison and the main characters move around as if dancing, with little turns and flourishes. It's all very stylised; it reminded me of Baz Luhrmann, but less manic and garish, more pretty and ballet-like.

And it was very pretty and visually arresting. The frocks alone are worth the price of admission, IMO. It took me a while to get used to the style, because it was not what I was expecting and, as someone who loves the book, a straightforward adaptation of it would have been fine by me. However, at the Q&A, Joe Wright discussed how he'd always wanted to make a film this way and he'd chosen Anna Karenina for it because of a quote that Russians of that era 'lived life as if on a stage'.

The acting is very stylised, too, sometimes it even seems a little like parody. Parody's probably too strong a word, but with so much of Anna and Vronsky's dialogue being 'epic, starcrossed-love' stuff that we've heard so many times before, it's as if the film expects a large portion of the audience to be rolling their eyes, so it doesn't play these scenes as 100% earnest. The unrealistic, over-the-top aspect of being so terribly, dramatically in love is acknowledged.

All in all, despite not being totally on board with what Wright did here, I did find myself completely engrossed and never bored by what was on the screen. I'll rewatch it to try and catch everything that was going on visually. I think this will be an adaptation that fans of the novel will either really love or really hate and it'll be interesting to see what kind of critical reception the film gets.

[stina]

Interesting, ronette. Thank you so much for sharing!

[Deleted]

Yes, thank you, ronette. After your review, I am even more interested in seeing it.

[save lilo!]

Jul 26, 2012 4:48:32 GMT -4 @evilminion said:

Count me among those dubious about Aaron Johnson. He's just not...dashing. I'm still excited about it though.

Just watched it tonight and well, I found him quite attractive in the role. The scene changes were distracting at first--a good distraction where I found myself trying to take in every detail. I would like to watch it again on the big screen.