Anna Karenina

The lead virtue - Jude Law as Karenin. The worst sin - the mixture of pieces from everywhere for create the atmosphere. The theater is a nice idea but only better used . Virtues - the portraits of Levin and Kitty. Problems - a not reasonable Vronski and imposibility to feel the drama of Karenina. Short. It is a film without soul. Images, inacuracy, a kitsch Russia and a sort of "ad usum Delphini" adaptation. Too noisy, too vulgar, using the not inspired actor for Vronsky and proposing a hard fight to Keira Knightley for create her Karenina. Short, a film without purpose. And that is all.

If your prime reaction to a film is one of disappointment there are usually some good reasons. My principal response to this version of a great and well-known story is one of irritation. The overblown theatrical format of the film gets in the way of character and dramatic development, to the point where you're aware of a director proclaiming "aren't we clever with the way we're staging this?" instead of admiring the straightforward and competent telling of a story. I'm not saying all films have to be constructed in a conventional manner, but when the form overtakes the substance something has gone wrong.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Count Vronsky is a piece of serious miscasting. Instead of looking like a great lover and sure temptation for wavering Anna,he looks like some feeble dandy with his foppish shock of dyed curly blonde hair which makes him look quite ridiculous. How on earth Anna could fall for such a creepy-looking guy is beyond most viewers I would submit.

Keira Knightley does the best she can, despite looking most of the time like she's attending a fashion shoot. The character of Anna requires portrayal of a tragic life which she doesn't quite achieve. However, the whole film fails to convey the grandeur of Tolstoy's vision, so she's let off the hook by the film's general levity and lack of substance.

I adore the novel, so I will be discussing Joe Wright's take on it and where it ranks amongst other adaptations but I will of course look at its merits as a film aside from the novel.

As a whole adaptation, this version falls somewhere in the middle. Even without all the metatheatrical trappings, it still took an interesting and valid approach to the novel, proving that the novel could be adapted until infinity and it would still be fresh each time. As readers of the novel would know, there is much more to it than Anna's affair. Tolstoy did not write vague types: he wrote fully-fleshed characters, and Tom Stoppard's screenplay acknowledged Tolstoy's style. Therefore I don't want to condemn the film outright because that would overshadow the things that it does get right.

Keira Knightley's version of Anna is not nearly as bad as you would think. She has the sense to restrain herself a little so that the many other elements of the novel shine through. She goes for the unsympathetic approach and it works. All her mannerisms that I generally find annoying- the schoolgirl smirking and rampant nymphomania- actually work for this role. This Anna takes Vronsky just because she can, and then ultimately regrets it. We can feel her frustration: she's young and wants to have fun but she's tied down to a stuffy older husband. In that sense, it's quite a modern interpretation, but not hideously so.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Count Vronsky was just miscast. If the novel had been about Anna seducing a schoolboy, he would have been great, but Vronsky is meant to be a dashing man. The styling is atrocious- he looks like a seventies Scandinavian Eurovision entry. Wright seems to have told some of the actors to act realistic and some to play up to the stylised setting. Taylor-Johnson plays the artifice so much that he just comes off as camp and sleazy. The scene where he is about to ride Frou Frou is like a production of Equus and there's a love scene with Keira Knightley that brought to mind an old advert for Philadelphia cheese. Their revelation of love is also poorly dealt with. Anna has some kind of fantasy dream where the two have an "erotic ballet" and suddenly they're banging away, presumably now in the real world.

Jude Law as Karenin. A bizarre choice when he could have played Vronsky five years ago and might even get away with it now at a push. However, he gives a performance that is probably his best. His Karenin is a bureaucrat through and through. Other adaptations have still made Karenin an attractive option. This Karenin is certainly not going to develop any great passion soon. We also see how he is manipulated by moral guardian Countess Lydia. If Law is trying to make a reputation as a serious actor, he's on the right path.

And what about all that pretentious theatre stuff? It seriously slows down the pace in the first third but once you get used to it, you can just enjoy the film. The ending is rather abrupt (no, that famous ending is not the last scene) but quite poignant.

The staging of this film is certainly something I hadn't seen before. The majority of scenes are made to look like everything is happening on a theater stage. This style doesn't add a whole lot to the film though. While the costumes, production design, music, and cinematography are all terrific, I'm afraid I can't say the same about the story. It just didn't really capture me and I found a lot of the film to be boring. Anna Karenina may be a classic text, but I can't use the same adjective for this retelling.

Director Joe Wright's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1877 novel Anna Karenina is one of the most visually stunning and artistically bold films I've seen in quite some time. Wright places most of his plot within the confines of a dilapidated theatre and has his actors make use of the stage, stalls and behind the scenes areas when forming the sets of late Tsarist Saint Petersburg. Actors will walk from one part of the theatre to another with sets and costumes changing around them, all with the hustle and bustle of both a real theatre and lively city. It's a stylistic decision which was probably met with scepticism by studio bosses and the like but works incredibly well to bring to life the characters which themselves are so wonderfully written by Tolstoy.

Joe Wright was lucky in a way in that he started off with a fantastic story, written by Tolstoy. This was then adapted by Oscar winning screenwriter Tom Stoppard who handed Wright and his cast a beautifully well crafted script which despite its complexities, rolls of the tongues of the talented cast. I have never read the source novel and have in fact never managed to finish any of the great works of Russian literature (the names don't help) so the plot was new to me. The themes of love, infidelity, trust and city vs countryside-life charge out of the screen and most are tackled very well. One area which I thought was slightly forgotten was the fascinating part of the plot regarding Levin (Domhnall Gleeson). Levin is in love with an attractive and highly sought after young Princess, Kitty (Alicia Vikander). His tale of love, family, hardship and politics feels slightly brushed to one side which is a shame as his arc also points towards the social upheaval which would greet Russia in the coming decades.

The first half of this film was probably my favourite half of any I've seen in the cinema this year. It whizzed along thanks to the dialogue, plot and interesting design. The problems that I have with some period dramas such as dull ideas and duller characters felt a million miles away as I watched, transfixed with a smile on my face. The highlight of the entire film for me was a ball in which some of the central characters danced. This was a scene full of careful manoeuvring, examination and lust as the two lovers become intimate for the first time. Onlookers watch on as Anna and Count Vronsky dance a waltz to an ever quickening pace. Kitty watches with horror as she sees the man she thought was hers slip away. The dancing itself is beautifully choreographed and came as close to art as I've seen dance be. Due in part to the nature of the story, the second half of the film doesn't quite live up to the pace or intensity of the opening half but is nonetheless interesting, dark and impressive.

There are three things which make Anna Karenina one of my favourite films of 2012 so far. The first is the story, the second is the direction and the third is the acting. Every single member of the cast dazzles here with not one actor giving a misjudged or poor performance. The standout for me is Jude Law whose mild mannered and restrained performance is simply incredible. He maintains grace and dignity despite having a terrible spell thanks to Anna and Law manages to convey all of his emotions in a similar understated way to Gary Oldman did with Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He also makes the audience feel incredibly empathetic towards his character. For an actress I'm not particularly fond of, Keira Knightly has somehow found herself with two excellent central performances in two of my favourite films of the year; this and A Dangerous Method. She feels like the go-to-girl for this type of role and is excellent although my girlfriend rightly points out that when she smiles, she looks like she's about to cry. Aaron Taylor-Johnson also gives a good performance, despite comedy moustache, as the dashing lover. He is believable as the swarve and arrogant cavalryman but is outplayed by Law in later scenes. It's funny to think that ten years ago it would probably have been Jude Law in the Vronsky role but he has matured as an actor in recent years and can carry off a character like Karenin with aplomb. Another standout is Matthew Macfadyen who plays more of a comedy character but plays it gracefully. Domhnall Gleeson is also superb as Levin.

Despite the great acting this is the director's film. The style is so bold that at first I was worried that it wouldn't work but to keep a city as vast as Saint Petersburg inside one theatre then having the rest of the world to play with outside the city was a fantastic idea which was pulled off with pinpoint precision. There are flaws, for instance it felt slightly too long and some areas weren't given as much attention as I'd have liked (two contradictory statements I know) but overall Anna Karenina is a enchanting film and one of the best I've seen so far this year.

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