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| We can't see what Knightley sees in Anna Karenina. |
«« Anna
Karenina. Written
by
Tom Stoppard, based
on the
novel by Leo Tolstoy. Directed
by Joe
Wright.
Criticizing a classic like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina can be tricky, given that those
who decide these things have already pronounced its greatness. Everybody is
entitled to an opinion, of course, but who is confident enough to say a book
like Karenina is overrated without at
least some fear of looking like an uncultured boob?
Let my boobs show, then: reading this
book, I was struck by just how little of it concerns Anna Karenina. Instead of
focusing on the business at hand, Tolstoy dwells on a multitude of seemingly
extraneous characters, only some of whom are interesting. There's too much time
spent on agricultural economics and too little on psychology. When I put it
down, I couldn't help feeling the old man really needed a good editor. Between
this and that other great 19th century novel of romantic illusion
and marital infidelity, I have to say I prefer Madame Bovary.
The good news about Joe Wright's new
version is that the limitations of a feature-film screenplay (120 double-spaced
script pages vs. 600 densely-worded pages) forced writer Tom Stoppard to focus
on Karenina herself. As the doomed affair between Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (Keira
Knightley) and the feckless rake Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes
center stage, Knightley's talent for suffering picturesquely can't be denied.
Pretty faces, pretty costumes, the baroque opulence of Imperial Russia in the
flush of its terminal rot—how can Wright miss?
Yet miss he does. The
problem starts with the decision to set the action more or less entirely on a
theatrical stage, with transitions (admittedly, cleverly) indicated by shifts
in camera angle, backdrop, location on the stage or out among the seats. It's
the sort of thing we'd expect in an opus by Peter Greenaway or Derek Jarman,
this conscious heightening of the artifice, reminding us at every turn that
this is just a story, and the figures onstage merely characters. The idea seems
apt enough in the abstract—the term "Potemkin village", referring to the political power of illusion, did originate in Russia.
Problem is, the device
isn’t applied just in the abstract. In practice, Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement)
takes it too far, making the ironic quotes around the "action" still
more emphatic by indulging in outright silliness. The bureaucratic offices of
Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen), for instance, are parodied in a goofy way we'd
expect among the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Goofiness
and tragedy don't coexist so well: Karenina
is, after all, one of the landmarks of realist
fiction. Wright ultimately wants it both ways—to engage in Brechtian distancing
and to make a traditional weepie out
of Anna's plight. He ends up succeeding fully at neither.
This Karenina might still have worked if we
saw the heroine as Tolstoy belatedly came to see her—as misguided but
sympathetic soul. The casting of Vronsky makes that impossible. With his
butterscotch highlights and moisturized complexion, Taylor-Johnson looks like
he belongs in a boy band more than the Czar's cavalry. Anna's decision to throw
away marriage and motherhood for Vronsky might convince if we see what she does
in him. Looking at Taylor-Johnson, we see only a One Direction music video.
Falling so desperately for such a pouffed poodle makes Anna not tragic, but a
ninny.
It's a shame because
Knightley—still young at 27—clearly has the chops to carry such hefty roles.
She has the lines of a living John Singer Sargent portrait, but also enough
fetching idiosyncracies, such as her faintly reptilian grin, to be interesting
too. Like an instrument waiting too long to be played by a master, there's
a world of potential in her sadly untapped in movies like Karenina, The Duchess, or
Atonement. Knightley in a Jane
Campion Madame Bovary, anyone?
© 2012 Nicholas Nicastro
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