New take on a Russian classic

Film review: Anna Karenina (12A) Rating:***
In the very early days of cinema, most film producers thought the easiest way of getting a successful stage play onto the silver screen was to place a camera in front of the theatre stage and film a complete performance.
In modern times, we, of course, know better. It’s difficult to maintain the air of narrative illusion for your audience when you flit between normal film settings and a kind of parody play in a mock theatre.
But this task is exactly what multi Oscar-winning screenplay writer Tom Stoppard has attempted with the classic Tolstoy tale Anna Karenina.
He has set some of the interior action, and even some of the exterior scenes – such as a horse race – within a mock theatre, and it is hard to see why.
Much of the film is a visual delight. Top director Joe Wright (Atonement, Hanna) and British actors, Jude Law (Enemy at the Gate, Cold Mountain), Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride and Prejudice) and a host of good British supporting actors do their very best with this classic tale of doomed love.
Knightley plays Anna, the bored wife of dull official Alexei Karenin (Law). She is attracted to sensual Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who sets out to seduce her, but then bores of her desperate jealousy and dumps her unceremoniously.
The photography is a visual treat, the acting out of the top drawer and the story strong and compelling, although the Vronsky character emerges in the film as a much nicer man than in the book – where he is a complete monster.
Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson gives him a conscience, which seems out of place in a noble cad, and his blonde, pretty looks jar unfortunately with his dark and sensual soul.
Knightley gives tortured Anna the full treatment, while Law is superb as a placid, ordinary man, driven to the edge by an obsessed wife.
And so back to the theatre setting. The only films I can think of where a theatre backdrop was used as a fantasy setting was Oh, What a Lovely War (a beautiful flop much appreciated by the critics, but not by audiences), and Masque of the Red Death, a Hammer horror classic.
But when you get Stoppard on board and give him his head, artistic innovation is to be expected. In allowing such new treatment to a well-loved classic story, two things film-makers risk are poor box office returns, sweetened by a scatter of Bafta nominations for cinematography, best adapted screenplay and much more. It’ll be interesting to see how Anna Karenina fares over the coming weeks.