ANNA KARENINA
A film review by Winona Kent
Copyright 1997 Winona Kent
This film deserves to be nominated for Best Cinematography. The scenes - and not just the scenery - are exquisite. Other people have mentioned that when one starts to focus on the scenery and not on the story, the film is doomed, but I'm not sure I agree. What Bernard Rose presents us with here is a series of canvases depicting life in Russia in the latter half of the 19th century. Landscape is everything. We have great sweeping views of snow fields. We have long shots of reapers at work. We have set scenes of the breathtaking architecture of the city, of gently undulating ice floes on a river, of the opulent luxury of stately homes. Onto these canvases, Rose places Tolstoy's characters. We dart in and out of their lives, briefly glimpsing the events which colour their existences. We are, in fact, patrons of an art gallery on a Saturday afternoon, wandering from tableau to tableau. The result is not three-dimensional, but flat, both literally and figuratively.
There just isn't enough time to immerse ourselves fully in the lives of Anna (Sophie Marceau) and Vronsky (Sean Bean), Kitty (Mia Kirshner) and Levin (Alfred Molina). The film is about two hours too short. To do it justice, Bernard Rose would have needed to have kept us in our seats for far longer, or he would have needed to have done it as a mini-series on television.
There is no doubt the film suffers from far too much editing. The scenes in the first half are choppy - and that long-awaited seduction - blink and you've missed it!
But what is the film, Anna Karenina, about? Is it really about Kitty and Levin and their conventional marriage? Is it really about unhappily married Anna and her lover Count Vronsky? Or is it a character study of a woman placed on the canvas of life, unable to do anything to alter her final destiny?
Time and again we are presented with the inevitability of events. I could go on forever about the symbolic imagery in this film. Prime among the images is the train, the fateful train. It introduces Anna and Vronsky, it cuts across the landscape, it provides a place where the characters can be alone to think, it transports them to their various destinations and it ushers Anna out of her mortal life at the end. It even shows up on her son's playroom floor, a miniature toy on a track, going round and round.
There are other images of the inevitable, the constant - the force, if you will, which drives everyone's lives - the field of reapers, which Levin joins, even mentioning in his voice-over that after a while, the movements of his arm with the scythe became automatic. The horse race, with the camera focusing on the driving power of the animals, and their headlong, almost blind run, dead ahead, with no finish line in sight. Even the lavish surroundings of the ballroom at a dance take on a certain symbolism, as evidenced when Kitty runs through doorway after doorway, down a long hallway, before reaching the dancers. This scene is echoed later on when Anna, in the throes of depression, wanders down a similar hallway, although now it is dark and almost sinister in appearance.
For all the critics' rantings and ravings about how inappropriate Sophie Marceau is in the role of Anna, I found her performance compelling. Each critic has brought his or her own prejudices to the movie theatre, based on their previous viewings of other versions of the film, their reading of the novel, their reading of other peoples' reviews, their perception of what a film about "romance" should be in 1997. Anna Karenina, as directed by Bernard Rose, IS, essentially, a weak character. That is the entire point of the story. She blames Vronsky when he finds himself unaccountably attracted to her, and never stops to consider that there might be something in HER behaviour and demeanor which is sending out those intoxicating pheremones. She consumates the relationship, takes Vronsky as her lover, and enjoys an idyllic sort of existence until the day of the fateful horse race, when she reveals all to her husband.
Said husband has all along been warning her about what people in society are saying about her behind her back, and she has been oblivious to it. She finds herself pregnant with Vronsky's child, but is frustrated because her husband refuses to give her a divorce. She miscarries the child, her husband decides he will accept her transgressions and take her back, she instead goes off with Vronsky to live in the country.
In the last half of the film, we see Anna's descent into a tortured sort of existence, denied access to her son, wrought with suspicion over Vronsky's fidelity, addicted to laudanum, rejected by Russian high society. Because of the social constraints of the time, but more importantly, because of her her weak character, she is totally incapable of seizing control over any aspect of her life to any successful degree. There are other female characters in this film who are also at the mercy of Russian society, yet they manage to exist and thrive as strong-willed mistresses, whores, princesses, and mothers. It is only Anna who seems to have trouble navigating her way around the canvas.
We know how the film ends; it ends with Anna and the train, and with Vronsky taking himself off, a broken man, to offer himself as a "weapon" in war. We knew how the film was going to end when we first sat down. The story, then, was the story of how Anna embarked on this journey and how she was, almost literally, unable to get off the train as it steamed towards its predetermined destination.
Before I go I have to say something here about the casting of the four main characters: Kitty, Levin, Anna and Vronsky. All four actors, Mia Kirshner, Alfred Molina, Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, will be remembered, I think, for their roles in this film. Of the four, I believe Sean Bean was done the most disservice by the choppy editing. If ever there was a film that cried out for some explicit passion, it was this one, and I cannot even begin to imagine what was left on the cutting room floor. If you're going to cast an actor who has earned an absolutely solid reputation in the UK playing characters who are intense and angry and passionate - for heaven's sake, let him BE intense and angry and passionate.
And finally, let me sum up by saying that this is a film set in the past, but it is very much about today. Rose takes ample swipes at the hypocrisy of a society where people are cast out for their behaviour, by influential people who, behind closed doors, engage in exactly the same sort of behaviour themselves.
Winona Kent
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