A radical departure from the classic versions starring Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh, Joe Wright’s version of the Tolstoy classic with his muse Keira Knightley is a bold re-imagining that places the action largely within the confines of a theater — not only on the stage, but in the orchestra (sometimes with seats removed), in the balconies and even in the rafters. It’s an audacious choice meant to heighten the theatricality and emotion of Tolstoy’s novel, but it also has a certain distancing effect.
Despite a tendency toward grimacing and nostril flaring, Knightley makes a fine Anna and could very well receive a second Best Actress Oscar nomination (after Wright’s more traditional “Pride and Prejudice”). She presents a more modern, neurotic take on a married mother of an aristocrat who’s caught up in a scandalous affair with the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (a somewhat colorless Aaron Taylor-Johnson, handsome but no Frederic March in the acting department). Also very good — perhaps the best he’s ever been on screen — is Jude Law in the usually thankless role of the dull, cuckolded Alexi, conflicted between his love for Anna and a desire to protect himself and their eight-year-old son from insistent gossip about his wife’s romantic adventures. There’s also fine work by Domhnall Gleeson and Matthew McFadden as Levin and Oblonsky, characters given more screen time than usual in previous screen adaptations.
As cleverly adapted by playwright Tom Stoppard, this is an “Anna Karenina” that’s pretty much guaranteed to divide audiences because of the way it combines its theatrical setting — complete with scenes where most of the actors freeze in their place to accentuate an activity or exchange between two characters — with a few sequences that are set in actual exteriors, including some filmed in Russia (a horse race takes place both inside and outside the theater). Some of the acting is even synchronized to the score — the effect is sometimes like a musical from which all of the numbers have been cut.
Focus Features will open “Anna Karenina” in the U.S. on Nov. 16.