Anna Karenina. La venganza es el perdón

Director Karen Shakhnazarov has put on screen Tolstoy's Anna Karenina = AK as a TV miniseries in eight episodes (2017) and one may assume that this movie, also released in 2017 has been culled from the series. It does not present Tolstoy's work in its entirety (which would have been difficult anyway). It excludes some key characters (e. G. Kitty and Levin) and gives little play to others such as Dolly and her husband Oblonsky, Anna's brother.

The key to the movie is, the tale is being told by Vronsky, Anna's lover twenty years after the facts. To give him the opportunity to speak up, the script adds an initial sequence where Vronsky is a staff officer in he Tsar's army facing the Japanese in Manchuria in 1904. He has been wounded and is being attended to by Sergey Karenin, Anna's son, now a military doctor. Sergey knew the outlines of the affair between his mother and Vronsky but only through the vengeful filter of his father. The middle aged Vronsky seems to have matured; he befriends and probably saves a shell shocked orphaned Chinese girl but some of his early flaws remain; he is wounded in a meaningless daredevil exploit (or, perhaps, he is courting death).

The new point of view changes the tale. In AK Vronsky came out as somewhat of a cad and we were not privy to his thoughts; here Vronsky remembers himself as thoughtful, loving and patient with Anna, and is haunted by her memory, On the other hand, Anna's husband and even Anna herself are seen in a less favorable light.than in AK. Characters are missing or minimized because, although important for Anna they were not of particular concern to Vronsky.

I found this experiment in reinterpretation of a classic fascinating. Direction is fluid and dynamic, acting and cinematography outstanding and the reconstruction of time and place perfect. A quality movie.

Lavishly staged feature version of the team's TV series. Costumes, imposing interior settings and performances are impressive and carry the piece about as far as it's Imperial horse race but Anna's declining relationship with Vronsky is dragged out interminably and the Manchurian framing story with the Chinese singing girl serves no purpose beyond further vindicating the poor chap.

Elizaveta Boyarskaya is authoritative and great looking but we loose sympathy with her mood shifts rapidly. The actress has been around for a while. She has a small part in the Oliver Hirschbiegel Der UNTERGANG / Downfall. For all her valiant efforts here she becomes the woman with those great changes of wardrobe. The new twists - minimising Vronsky's moving on Anna, a more sympathetic Karenin, giving Vronsky an extended story just weaken the adaptation.

It's doing festivals in an draggy 138 minute version.

These filmmakers have treated Tolstoy's novel as a stimulus - and then made a film. It is not Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. It takes considerable liberties with it, adds some extra content, and interprets the characters in a very different way. That being said, it is a good film! It is a perfectly fine watch. It's just got very little to do with the novel on which it is based.

It is set after the novel's events during the Russian-Japanese War of the early 1900s (some material has been taken from other fictional works about this conflict). The grown-up Seryozha is an army captain in a military camp full of dying soldiers and degradation. He chances upon a wounded Vronsky, realises that this is the man who ruined his mother, and asks Vronsky to tell him his version of events, at which point we get the events of Anna Karenina in Vronsky's flashback.

(This means that, like other adaptations, there is no Levin.)

I like that approach! I like that Vronsky is one of the key people for a change. We get a redemption arc. He is ennobled by his war effort. He takes a vulnerable Chinese girl in the camp under his wing and saves her life, which is sweet. The film also interrogates one of my favourite themes of the novel, and one that is often omitted from even the best adaptations: the emotional repercussions of Anna's death on Vronsky. It is clearly shown in this film that she has left him emotionally ruined.

What is also interesting is that we know Anna's fate right from the beginning. So, whereas the novel starts very romantically, making us complicit (I would argue) in Anna and Vronsky's relationship only for us to regret it later, this film never allows us any such complicity. It is a very sober, much less romantic retelling. It doesn't let us have any fun. We know it is headed for disaster. The film reinforces from the start that life is just grim.

This film has its positives. It's beautifully shot, well-executed and has good performances. It is nice to see the story filmed in Russian (its true form!). The military framing is creative and interesting. Maksim Matveyev carries on the modern tradition of Vronsky's actor being very hot. (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Santiago Cabrera, and now him! We Tolstoy fans are lucky...). This is despite some bizarre moments, like when Anna is about to give birth and doesn't even look slightly pregnant, or when Karenin forgives her in a scene just two minutes after he has sworn to disown her.

But it falls flat when comparing it to the novel.

Because we are receiving the story through the filter of someone intensely affected by it, every character's interpretation changes. Karenin is quite unpleasant here, presumably because of Vronsky's bias. Vronsky himself (in the flashbacks) is quite solemn; he doesn't have the fun-loving nature of his literary counterpart. And his chemistry with Anna is not there. Maybe it's cultural differences (I'm English), but their relationship did not seem that passionate to me. It is implied that Anna only did it to get away from Karenin. That links nicely to the film's generally grim tone (again, 'life is grim' is this film's message!), but it makes for a pretty dreary retelling of Tolstoy's moving and emotionally electric novel.

But the biggest oddity is that Anna's depiction is borderline repulsive. She is nasty and vindictive. She is horrible to Vronsky, horrible to Annushka, and extremely aloof from her daughter. It gets infuriating towards the end. She goes a bit psychopathic. One almost wants to scream at Vronsky to get as far away from her as possible.

Part of me appreciates the decision to make Anna awful. It's not out of keeping with the book. Previous adaptations have, in my view, slightly underemphasised Anna's more negative qualities. But I think this goes a bit far the other way. There should remain a fundamental sympathy! She is a tragic figure, even with her more unappealing qualities.

But because this film is committed to being depressing (and possibly, as said, because Vronsky is narrating it), she comes across as spiteful and nasty. I couldn't stand her. A more accurate depiction would be somewhere in the middle.

These complaints almost entirely arise when comparing it to the source text! As a depressing and provocative war film in its own right, it is interesting, well-made and worth watching. It's just not the best adaptation.

Flawlessly produced and meticulously authentic, this production deserves more enthusiasm than it has evidently created. This version is worth checking out not merely because of the breathtaking visuals, authentic costumes and perfectly re-created historical ballroom dances (with actual orchestras playing live music on the set), but also for the compelling character development. The original miniseries takes six hours, but finally we get a compelling glimpse of what might have been going on in the mind and soul of a tormented and spirited woman in a rigid society. The beautiful Elizaveta Boyarskaya creates a high-strung, intense Anna, whose love develops into obsession and spirals down a maelstrom of unstoppable self-destruction. She gives us a mentally unstable, bipolar heroine who is as irritating as she is lovable. Her high octane performance is well balanced by the stoic but eventually deep and touching performances by the handsome Maksim Matveev (Vronski), Boyarskaya's real life husband, and the spooky Vitaliy Kishchenko (Karenin), both unable to provide her with what she needs and yet unable to let her go. The story is presented as a series of flashbacks, told thirty years later by the aged Vronski to Anna's son - not necessarily a very important narrative device, but - why not. One should definitely give this atmospheric version a chance.

It's a bit groggy at times but a solid adaptation which adds to the novel. Set pieces are magnificent. Probably a lost in translation situation with foreign critics. Also I watched the 8 part, 6 hour version.