After Karenina: Amy's Take

When this movie concluded, I wanted to walk back to the projection booth and re-start the whole thing. I could have easily spent another two hours and ten minutes watching this elegant masterpiece all over again. Confession: For about the first 15 minutes of the movie, I kept thinking to myself, "I hate this." The uber-stylized rendition made it initially hard to immerse myself in a story I know practically like the back of my hand. Then suddenly, a magic switch flipped in my head and I was thoroughly bowled over. Director Joe Wright is kind of a genius, and this movie — the imagery, the painstaking attention to detail, the perfect use of symbolism — proved as much. Keira Knightley as Anna was enthralling and ironically her onetime "lover" Matthew MacFadyen (Pride & Prejudice) plays her slightly buffoonish brother, Oblonsky, which was a very surreal change-up. My only quibbles with the movie come with the two men in Anna's life. I know I'm very likely to be in the minority on this, but Aaron Taylor as Vronsky was just wrong, wrong, wrong. Casting him for this role was an insult to dashing men the world over, and as such, I found it very hard to understand why Anna was throwing away everything for this cheezy-looking-and-acting Lothario. In that sense, I guess I identified with Karenin, who clearly felt the same way. Speaking of, Jude Law didn't sit quite right with me as Anna's kind-but-cold husband, Karenin. (He didn't seem distant or problematic enough to make the scandalous affair believable, but that's just me.) Levin and Kitty = ADORABLE. Their love story is always feel-good, and this case proved no exception. I wish I'd connected more with the main love story, but for the sheer innovation and clever conceit of staging the entire production in an old theater, this film is a must-see. (Incidentally, here's an interesting interview in the L.A. Times with Joe Wright explaining his interesting rationale for doing so.)

After Karenina: Kim's Take

Swoon factor: 5/5. Visual: 5/5. Casting: 4/5. From start to finish, I was utterly enchanted by this gorgeous adaptation of Tolstoy's novel. The casting was just fab (although I suppose I wondered for a moment why Keira gets all the great roles in British productions. Oh well...) As my friend Jessica remarked afterward, "That was a Downton Abbey reunion," thanks to all the cast members from DA who appeared in the film (including Lady Mary Crawley as Anna's truest friend, Princess Myagkaya). It was great to see Ruth Wilson from Luther. She was perfect as the gossipy Princess Betsy. (BTW: I had to look up all the character's names before writing this post, so don't give me any special props for throwing down names as though I could actually keep track of them.) During the movie I was all #teamVronsky, but I thought better of it later and switched to #teamLevin. Which perfectly segues into my #1 takeaway (SPOILER ALERT!): Thank god women living in this time and place don't have to throw themselves under a train for choosing to love the wrong man (more than once sometimes) or, for that matter, making any mistakes in love. (As a sensitive soul with passion to spare, I've certainly made my fair share, so I would've been in BIG trouble had I lived among nineteenth century Russian aristocracy... but oh, those gowns and that decor!) I plan on trying to see this movie again while it's in theaters. Stay tuned for Amy's take on the film.

The Many Faces of Anna Karenina

Even though the Wall Street Journal 's Joe Morgenstern said this morning that it "suffers from the malady of hyperenchantment," we're practically having heart palpitations over the release of Joe Wright's Anna Karenina starring Keira Knightley. But since we couldn't work a screening into our schedules for another week-and-a-half, we decided to bide our time by recollecting some of the most notable previous adaptations of Tolstoy's classic. (And fyi, you'll find enough fur in the following clips to launch a PETA protest.)

1935: Here's a trailer for the Oscar-winning 1935 screen adaptation starring Greta Garbo, Frederic March, Maureen O'Sullivan, and Basil Rathbone. Perfection in black-and-white.


1948: Vivien Leigh stars in this version. (Dubbed here in Russian for a note of Tolstoy-esque authenticity! LOL.)


1967: A Russian-language version. (Dig the CRAZY techno editing of this clip!)


1977: Awesome Oblonsky facial hair and some rather jaunty Mazurka moves in this BBC miniseries version starring Nicola Pagett.


1985: We *heart* Christopher Reeve! This is the first film version I (Amy) ever saw in my high school English class, so I have a soft spot for it. (Jacqueline Bisset was Anna.)


1997: Sean Bean plays Vronsky to the gorgeous Sophie Marceau's Anna, with Alfred Molina an unusual casting choice for Levin.  (*MAJOR SPOILER ALERT in this video clip.)


2000: Helen McCrory nailed Anna's feisty (well, unhinged) personality in this miniseries, as you'll see here.