Here are my notes:
Anna
Karenina
Director: Joe
Wright
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Keira
Knightley, Jude Law, Domhnall Gleeson, Matthew MacFadyen
Awards and Nominations
- Nominated
for four Oscars (including Cinematography and Soundtrack)
- A
further eight wins and 19 nominations (including BAFTA nomination for Best
British Film)
“Wright's movie is a dazzling affair, a highly
stylised treatment of a realistic novel, superbly designed by Sarah Greenwood
and edited by Melanie Ann Oliver, with rich photography by Seamus McGarvey,
sumptuous costumes by Jacqueline Durran and a highly romantic Tchaikovskian
score by Dario Marianelli, all previous Wright collaborators.”
Philip
French
Anna Karenina (Keira
Knighley) is an aristocrat in Russian high society at the end of the nineteenth
century. When she meets the affluent
Count Vronsky (Aaron Johnson) she enters into a love affair that has
life-changing consequences.
There have been
numerous TV and film adaptations of Tolstoy’s novel, with actresses as diverse
as Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, Jacqueline Bisset and Nicola Pagett all having
played the title role, and the resulting adaptations have borne a greater or
lesser degree of fidelity to the original story. Tom Stoppard’s objective, as he worked on his
adaptation of the 800 page novel, was to produce a script that would “deal
seriously with the subject of love” as it applies to several pairs of
characters: not just the relationship of Anna and Vronsky, but also Anna’s relationship
with her husband (Jude Law) as well as the parallel shy relationship between
Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kitty
(Alicia Vikander) which Tolstoy himself intended to run as a quiet counterpoint
to the passion of Anna’s affair. Joe Wright
filmed the script that Stoppard had written, but having failed to find
authentic locations for the Moscow and St Petersberg scenes, decided to set
these scenes within a dilapidated 19th century Russian theatre which
became a large-scale image of the upper-class tsarist society amongst which
Anna and Vronsky carried on their affair.
After beginning his
career in television Joe Wright made his name in the cinema with an adaptation
of Pride and Prejudice (2005) which
won him a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and which starred Keira Knightley
as Elizabeth Bennet. He worked with
Knightley again on the multi-Oscar nominated Atonement (2007). The Soloist (2000), the true story of a
homeless classically –trained musician, marked a clear change of direction. His previous project was another change of
direction: Hanna is the story of a
16-year-old girl, raised by her father to be the perfect assassin, who is
dispatched on a mission across Europe, while being pursued by a ruthless
intelligence agent and her operatives.
Following Anna Karenina Joe Wright
is about to make his debut as a stage director with a production of Pinero’s Trelawney of the Wells which is about to
open in London.
Here's the trailer:
