{"id":2653,"date":"2021-08-19T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T12:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=2653"},"modified":"2023-01-22T22:24:18","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T22:24:18","slug":"film-review-anna-karenina-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=2653","title":{"rendered":"FiLM REViEW: Anna Karenina, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Could’ve been pretty good: ends up being pretty lame.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m almost as certain Kiera Knightley won\u2019t read this as I am that planet earth doesn\u2019t in fact rest on a turtle\u2019s back. Indeed, I sincerely hope she doesn\u2019t, as I have nothing against her personally – obviously! – as I don’t know her<\/em> personally. But as an actress… There’s a reason why pretty appears twice in my title: she’s pretty, but (in this movie at least)… pretty awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started writing this review before the movie was even halfway through: having initially been surprised, but also intrigued, even momentarily charmed, by the strangely theatrical approach, it was only after watching Knightley destroy a few scenes that I started to dislike the film with a rapidly growing intensity. By the end of the film this subsided into puzzled disappointment. Consequently I’m submitting my review as it evolved, starting quite angrily but ending merely critically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like so much modern product – I don’t want to say culture, as it dignifies this in a way I don\u2019t think it merits – this is all about surface appeal. And, frankly, that just doesn’t cut it. There are some aspects that could’ve saved it, such as the ultra-theatricality, but they don’t. Perhaps the chief reason, or reasons, are the people in some of the main roles; again this movie causes definition difficulties: I can’t say actors, as I can’t call what I see acting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All lush imagery, with no depth or drama.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The biggest problem is Keira Knightley, who simply appears, in this film at any rate, incapable of serious\/credible acting. In popcorn like Pirates Of The Caribbean<\/em>, the only kind of movie I\u2019ve seen with her in that appears to be suited to her, I can just about bear watching her. This is sad because most of the cast are decent actors (the inverse-parallel sub-plot of Levin and Kitty’s love is actually, and especially relative to the main narrative thread, quite good), but they’re wasted when the films focus leaves one not only not caring what happens to Anna – I was more interested in Vronsky’s beautiful horse, as it had more charisma and personality – but actually wishing something awful would happen to her, sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Judaeo-Christian ‘Garden of Eden’ myth, that effectively casts consciousness as a curse (rather than as a blessing, or a bit of both), might apply equally well to beauty in an instance such as this. Knightley is, to state the ludicrously obvious, beautiful. Very, very beautiful – although personally I can’t stand the overly cultivated mannerism that is her trademark pout* – as are many of the central leads, male and female. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It galls me deeply that modern culture seems increasingly about nothing more than surface and effect; there’s simply no depth whatsoever. Or, perhaps to be fairer, whatever depth there might be is effectively lost in the crass glare of the ‘celebrity effect’. Personally I can’t see why we can’t have both beauty and<\/em> depth. Or better still, the range and diversity of appearance and feeling that there is in the real world. But you won’t get them in equal measure here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Garbo as Anna, in ye ancient 1935 black and white movie, I cared what happened to her, and felt emotionally involved. Watching Knightley simply irritates. The film fails because the main character is un-believable. All the other things around her, including some good ideas and good performances, are sucked into the black hole of her failure to be credible in the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More pop video Mills & Boon than Tolstoy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, passing finally to the brave and clever super-stagey production: many directors, let’s just pluck Derek Jarman or Ingmar Bergman out of the aether<\/em> by way of example, carry off the trick of ultra-theatricality. But, in the end, Joe Wright doesn’t, with the result – and especially when Knightley’s in the frame – that this comes off more pop video than drama, kitsch rather than art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Woody Allen has actress Olga Georges-Picot parody the sex-kitten pout in his terrific Love & Death<\/em>, which, whilst being an overtly slapstick comedy, is also a far better work of art, and far more profound (in so many ways) than Joe Wright\u2019s weird souffl\u00e9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could’ve been pretty good: ends up being pretty lame. I\u2019m almost as certain Kiera Knightley won\u2019t read this as I am that planet earth doesn\u2019t in fact rest on a turtle\u2019s back. Indeed, I sincerely hope she doesn\u2019t, as I have nothing against her personally – obviously! – as I don’t know her personally. But … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “FiLM REViEW: Anna Karenina, 2012”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-GN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2653"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8178,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions\/8178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}