A quick glance at the plot summary of the novel was enough to convince me I never wanted to read it or watch any adaptations. A look at who directed this adaptation told me all I needed to know about its quality. But I was bored and wanted to watch something I hadn't seen before. So guess what I ended up watching?
Like Pride and Prejudice (2005), which was made by the same *ahem* "director", I laughed all the way through this film. And again, it wasn't supposed to be funny.
They chose to write the title in a colour that blends into the background until it's barely visible. Of course they did. Why would anything about this disaster look like an actual film made by professionals?
Anna Karenina is based on an 1878 novel by Leo Tolstoy. I don't have to read the novel to know this is an atrocious butchering of it.
Several recognisable actors are wasted on it:
Keira Knightley (Elizabeth in Pirates of the Caribbean) as Anna
Matthew Macfadyen (Arthur in Little Dorrit 2008) as Stepan
Jude Law (Watson in Sherlock Holmes 2009) as Karenin
Kelly Macdonald (voice of Merida in Brave) as Darya
Alicia Vikander (Gaby in The Man From U.N.C.L.E 2015) as Kitty
Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux in Star Wars) as Levin
Holliday Grainger (Estella in Great Expectations 2012) as a baroness
Michelle Dockery (Erminia in Return to Cranford) as a princess
For some reason known only to the director's disordered mind, most of the film is set on a stage. A stage in a theatre that appears to have just been struck by a hurricane, no less. If you're like me, this will leave you scratching your head and utterly unable to suspend your disbelief.
We start with some scumbag getting caught in adultery while a weirdo waltzes around reading a letter while her maid dresses her. Yes, you read that last part right. The viewer has no time to process this absurdity before things get even worse. Scene changes aren't done by the traditional method of one scene ending and another one beginning. That would be too normal. Instead backgrounds change, props are lowered onto the stage, and people run around pushing furniture and playing musical instruments.
All of this would be understandable if this was a stage play. But it's a film. Films and stage plays are completely different forms of entertainment and held up to completely different standards. A theatre can get away with extras dragging props around the stage and painted backgrounds representing scenery. A film can't.
Turns out the weirdo is Anna and the scumbag is her brother Stepan/Stiva. She goes off to Moscow to get his wife to forgive him. To forgive him. Not to get her to leave him, as anyone with any brains would under the circumstances. On the train (which is represented by a toy train. I kid you not) Anna meets another scumbag, the mother of the man she'll run away with. Anna's behaviour here is really weird. Who just shoves a picture of their child in a complete stranger's face? 😒
Meanwhile Stepan meets a friend, Levin, who is apparently a farmer but looks more like a tramp. Levin is in love with some girl called Kitty but doesn't think she could love him. Considering how shabby he looks, he's probably right unless he makes an effort to tidy himself up. No self-respecting girl wants to marry a man who looks like he doesn't know what a hairbrush and razor are.
We meet Vronsky, yet another scumbag (who has apparently stolen his hairstyle, mustache and costume from 1937!Rupert of Hentzau, and only succeeds in looking sleazy instead of dashing). Unfortunately, Anna meets him too. The director clearly wants to portray this as "true love". It just makes me despise both of them. The only characters in this film who are at all likeable are Stepan's wife Dolly, Anna's husband Karenin, and her son Seryozha. Everyone else can go die in a fire. Or jump in front of a train.
Poor Dolly gives one of the few non-wooden performances in the film when she says she wants to leave Stepan. Anna convinces her not to leave and says Stepan loves her(!). I vented my feelings about this by yelling at the screen. (Thank goodness no one else was in the house to hear!)
Everything about this film gives the impression the director thought he was filming a stage play. I fully expected Levin to burst into a song or monologue before the ball. This film is so bad that such a thing wouldn't even be odd. With every passing minute I'm reminded more and more of Moulin Rouge!. (That isn't a compliment. Moulin Rouge! nearly made my brain explode.)
Why on earth is Anna almost always smiling? Even in scenes when there's nothing to smile at? Is her face stuck like that? Is it supposed to show she doesn't take anything seriously?
That ball has some of the weirdest hand gestures I've ever seen. It looks like someone who knew nothing about ballet looked at some ballet gestures and tried to copy them. What on earth is the point of that fireworks thing? Somehow I doubt it was in the book.
Amazingly things get even worse. I skipped several scenes. By the time the race happens I just wanted this travesty to be over. The viewer is supposed to be sad when Anna's supposedly dying. I hoped the end was finally in sight, until I remembered hearing how Anna actually dies. Guess what, she recovers and the film continues to stagger on.
The director clearly wants to portray that woman at the opera as a villain. Unfortunately he overlooked the unimportant little fact that Vronsky and Anna are among the most repulsive characters to crawl out of a gutter and onto a screen.
Dolly used to be one of exactly three characters I felt sorry for. But then she -- Dolly, whose husband is an adulterer, who more than anyone else should know how devastating Anna's sin is to her family -- says she's happy to see Anna. What the hell? ðŸ˜
The film drags on and on. Anna becomes convinced Vronsky is going to leave her for another woman. Why is she surprised? He's already shown he has no morals. The viewer is clearly supposed to pity her. I just looked at the clock and prayed the end would come soon.
Laughing at this abomination is the only way to get through it without throwing things at the screen. Thankfully the film provides plenty of things to laugh at. I guffawed at the scene where either time has stopped or everyone has been replaced with wax statues. The constant cuts between Anna and a train's wheels are more disorientating than funny, but I still managed to laugh at the director's ham-fisted attempt to drum up some sympathy for her before her death. That ship sailed a long time ago, I'm afraid. (Or perhaps I should say "That train left a long time ago" instead.)
Oh, for goodness' sake. We're supposed to believe Vronsky could hear Anna's death from a long distance away? And that Anna's body would be intact and conspicuously injury-less after being run over by a train?
The film finally ends! ...With a scene of a theatre overgrown with flowers. What. At least it doesn't show what happened to Vronsky, so the viewer is free to imagine him dying too.
There should be a law forbidding incompetent idiots from making films. Anyone who disagrees will be convinced if they watch this film. Anna Karenina is absolute trash as a film, but it's a good look at the depths to which some directors can sink.
Is it available online?: Dear god, I hope not.
Rating: 1/10. I hesitate to even give it that. Perhaps 0/10 would be better.
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