Anna Karenina

2012

Action / Drama / Romance

83
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 63% · 193 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 50% · 50K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.6/10 10 106142 106.1K

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Plot summary

In Imperial Russia, Anna, the wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets the charming cavalry officer Vronsky to whom she is immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.


Uploaded by: OTTO
May 08, 2013 at 03:48 AM

Director

Top cast

Kyle Soller as Korsunsky
Bill Skarsgård as Makhotin
Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
1018.59 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
2 hr 9 min
Seeds 1
2.00 GB
1920*1080
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
2 hr 9 min
Seeds 46

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by evanston_dad 2 / 10

An Experiment Gone Pretentiously Wrong

Dreadful screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's magnificent novel.

Director Joe Wright, who made the very good "Pride and Prejudice" and the very forgettable "Atonement," turns Tolstoy's novel into an incoherent mess. It's as if he stood over Baz Luhrmann's shoulder and decided that he was going to try to direct a film just like him. The problems with that are 1.) Luhrmann is a terrible director and should be emulated by no one and 2.) His style is completely wrong for "Anna Karenina" anyway.

For some reason, Wright decides to stage the entire film as if it's a play in a run-down theatre, so actors sit on purposely artificial sets and we see them moving through the wings as they get ready to make their entrances. I get it, I get it. The Russian aristocracy was a study in theatricality and Wright wants to play up its superficiality. Which may have been fine as a framing device for the film, but he carries it through the entire thing until it becomes tedious. He also has his actors mug and mince around like they're performing broad music-hall comedy, a style of acting that is not only incongruous with the source material but doesn't even make sense within the context of the film as written (the screenplay is by Tom Stoppard).

But the worst thing about this "Anna Karenina" is the casting, which -- aside from Jude Law, who isn't exactly well cast as Anna's husband but is a good enough actor to pull it off -- doesn't get a single thing right. If Keira Knightley isn't a disaster as Anna, it's only because she's not a powerful enough screen presence to be a disaster. Her jutting jaw and gritted teeth have never been filmed to less flattering effect; and this is the character who's supposed to walk into a ball and command the entire room without even trying to. Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky looks like an actor from a gay porn film, and acts fey enough throughout the film to be in one (Vronsky would never hold a cigarette like that!) He sidles through the film like a boy in a high school play trying to look virile without understanding what virile means. Matthew MacFadyen is thanklessly cast as Stiva and plays him like a buffoon. And Domhnall Gleeson is Levin, a character who should be powerful looking and outdoorsy, but as cast here instead looks like he should be sitting in a student cafe writing editorials about Communism.

Defenders of the film have said that there's no point in making yet another version of "Anna Karenina" if the filmmakers are just going to make yet one more faithful version of it, which I actually agree with. I'm not opposed to experimenting with the classics. I just think this particular experiment goes wildly and pretentiously wrong.

Grade: D

Reviewed by nogodnomasters 8 / 10

All the world's a stage

This is a bold artsy unorthodox version of the novel. If you are not a fan of indie, stage, and symbolism to the point of absurdity, this isn't your film. The theme of the novel is "no one may build their happiness on another's pain." This takes on a duo meaning as it not only shows us this in personal life but in the class differences in Russia. The stage is the first major metaphor/symbol you will notice. The aristocracy live their live on the stage. It is a world of drama, make believe and one that will soon draw its final curtain. The workers are off stage and live in the rafters and audience supporting the rich. Who is really happy?

The locomotion movement and sound represented the emotions of Anna, thrusting when she feels raw passion and falling silent at the end. In addition to the symbolism, the film has the irony of Anna attempting to patch up an infidelity relationship only to fall into one. Perhaps inadvertently, the novel portrays how women are trapped inside a man's world.

Konstantin seems to represent "us" in this film as he is a man who freely travels between two worlds as he seeks his happiness. While prudish, he is constant as his name suggests.

The themes and symbolism are very heavy. Like reading a Russian novel, you feel your head explode as you try to take it all in. Not for everyone and you should know after 10 minutes of viewing.

Parental Guidance: No f-bombs. Near male nudity. Artsy sex scenes.

Reviewed by miss_lady_ice-853-608700 7 / 10

An interesting take on AK marred by pretentiousness

I adore the novel, so I will be discussing Joe Wright's take on it and where it ranks amongst other adaptations but I will of course look at its merits as a film aside from the novel.

As a whole adaptation, this version falls somewhere in the middle. Even without all the metatheatrical trappings, it still took an interesting and valid approach to the novel, proving that the novel could be adapted until infinity and it would still be fresh each time. As readers of the novel would know, there is much more to it than Anna's affair. Tolstoy did not write vague types: he wrote fully-fleshed characters, and Tom Stoppard's screenplay acknowledged Tolstoy's style. Therefore I don't want to condemn the film outright because that would overshadow the things that it does get right.

Keira Knightley's version of Anna is not nearly as bad as you would think. She has the sense to restrain herself a little so that the many other elements of the novel shine through. She goes for the unsympathetic approach and it works. All her mannerisms that I generally find annoying- the schoolgirl smirking and rampant nymphomania- actually work for this role. This Anna takes Vronsky just because she can, and then ultimately regrets it. We can feel her frustration: she's young and wants to have fun but she's tied down to a stuffy older husband. In that sense, it's quite a modern interpretation, but not hideously so.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Count Vronsky was just miscast. If the novel had been about Anna seducing a schoolboy, he would have been great, but Vronsky is meant to be a dashing man. The styling is atrocious- he looks like a seventies Scandinavian Eurovision entry. Wright seems to have told some of the actors to act realistic and some to play up to the stylised setting. Taylor-Johnson plays the artifice so much that he just comes off as camp and sleazy. The scene where he is about to ride Frou Frou is like a production of Equus and there's a love scene with Keira Knightley that brought to mind an old advert for Philadelphia cheese. Their revelation of love is also poorly dealt with. Anna has some kind of fantasy dream where the two have an "erotic ballet" and suddenly they're banging away, presumably now in the real world.

Jude Law as Karenin. A bizarre choice when he could have played Vronsky five years ago and might even get away with it now at a push. However, he gives a performance that is probably his best. His Karenin is a bureaucrat through and through. Other adaptations have still made Karenin an attractive option. This Karenin is certainly not going to develop any great passion soon. We also see how he is manipulated by moral guardian Countess Lydia. If Law is trying to make a reputation as a serious actor, he's on the right path.

And what about all that pretentious theatre stuff? It seriously slows down the pace in the first third but once you get used to it, you can just enjoy the film. The ending is rather abrupt (no, that famous ending is not the last scene) but quite poignant.

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