I once asked Dustin Hoffman if he had any favorite movies or actors. He replied that he had favorite performances. Referring it seemed, to much smaller periods within a film. There are several shots where Keira is picture perfect, but this role was not for her. This performance ruins our memory of her former success under Joe Wright. Especially her first, which is her most unforgettable. Black Swan did the same for Natalie Portman, another of our cinema sweethearts. Which I walked out of.

Her part here needed to be much deeper and more complex, but instead it was shallow and trite. The way Anna was portrayed was out of place. Whether by acting or writing I don't know. Either way it was a mistake. All of the male leads, four at my count, complemented each other perfectly and were well done. Some surprising cameos among the women.

I didn't see it at the theater after hearing about the stage within the movie technique, which has actually been done in a few good movies. I didn't see it as a problem. The recent film Anonymous about Shakespeare began this way, as do others based on plays of his. Julie Taymore in her solo attempt to put Titus on film blended styles while injecting modern means and mechanism into near ancient settings, and pulled it off very smartly. Both of these were good films and highly worth watching. I point this out as there were many complaints about it in other reviews.

It isn't the blending of the modern and the ancient, or the use of multiple styles in itself that is a problem. It's more a question of whether it works, and how well it was done. I believe here it does. Peter Greenaway excels at this kind of film making. We sometimes forget how shallow we have become as a society. What a melange and patchwork our culture is. Are we surprised it shows up in our films.

There are some moments of clarity in the movie that are almost bewitching. While others present motion picture as painting or poetry. Some very good transitions. Overall I believe it to be a very creative effort. It is a blending of choreography, stage, and cinema with a desire to please the eye and entertain our emotions. It was only the moral ambiguity and modern sensibilities between the two lovers I found contemptible. Both of them being out of time and out of place.

Love is the great conquerer of lust. As lust is the great destroyer of love. I believe the author intended this to be about the second. It is a mistake to think movies from books should be the book. Just as it is wrong for an amoral people to replace the beliefs of a moral people . . with their own. Especially when borrowing or telling their stories. One of the great enjoyments for all lovers of period pieces is going back to a time when people knew morality and understood what it was, and most agreed with it. Whether or not they actually were moral is entirely . . another story.

http://fullgrownministry.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/covet/

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

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.