I have to confess that never read Tolstoy’s novel and don’t feel bad about it. War and Peace, obligatory reading in high school, provided me with long-lasting Tolstoy overdose. Nor did I watch any of its screen adaptations. I knew the plot, more or less, and felt my curiosity satisfied. In my univiersity years, I remember one of our math professors asking “What has the Wronskian determinant got to do with Anna Karenina?” (nothing) and a question in our pharmacology class “What drug was Anna Karenina abusing?” (morphine).
Yesterday, Spanish television treated us to 2012 film. Tamara suggested to watch the beginning at least... so we ended sitting through all of it. I enjoyed it, most of all the costume design by Jacqueline Durran and choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui — and not just the ballroom sequences (the dance is pretty ridiculous, but that’s the point), but also, for instance, the routine of bureaucrats rubber-stamping the papers in the Stiva’s office. The whole setting, that of a theatre stage from where you can walk out, say, into the field, invites us not to take Tolstoy too seriously. Which is great. The scene in the theatre (within a theatre), naturally, reminded me of Boris vs Countess Alexandrovna in Love and Death. Even Во поле берёза стояла, a folk song which I detest since childhood, seemed to be pleasantly appropriate.
There is a great supporting cast; in my view, Alicia Vikander is outstanding as Princess Kitty. Keira Knightley is good, if rather predictable, in the title role. Given the playful way the director treated the material, I was half-expecting Anna to do something truly outrageous in the end — like, I dunno, not to jump under a train, or dump that dumbass Vronsky. Speaking of whom: who needs Aaron Taylor-Johnson if you already have Jude Law?
No comments:
Post a Comment