The
costumes by Jacqueline Durran are sumptuous , the production design by
Sarah Greenwood head spinning and the original music by Dario Marianelli
is at times as frantic as the editing is and at other times very
operatic. The camera loves Keira Knightley, as Anna Karenina, just as
much as Keira Knightley loves the camera.  Jude Law, as her cuckolded
 husband, gives the best performance in the film and 20 years ago would
have played  her lover, Vronsky, bringing more fire, looks and chemistry
to the role than does Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Whether
it is the concept of the screenplay by the world famous playwright Tom
Stoppard and/or the director Joe Wright, based on the even more famous
novel by Leo Tolstoy, the novelty of staging it as a play, using every
nook and cranny of a theatre, very quickly falls flat and takes you out
of the story just as Wright goes outside the theatre too many times. At
times it seems like an opera, operetta or musical theatre without songs
being sung. At times you find yourself counting the costume changes by
Anna and Vronsky trying to see who accomplishes the most and there are a
lot. In some scenes costume changes are stylistic which is intriguing
at first but then, sadly, like the movie, becomes boring.

There
are many roles in the film but the more prominent are Matthew Macfadyen
as Anna’s brother Stiva who cheats on his wife but doesn’t have to pay
for it as women did, his wife, Dolly, played by Kelly Macdonald,
Domhnall Gleeson as farmer Levin  who, at the beginning of the story is
jilted by Princess Kitty played by Alicia Vikander.

There
have been many versions of “Anna Karenina” from Hollywood and Russia
plus a few television films with the most popular/famous starred Greta
Garbo as Anna in 1935 which was one hour and 35 minutes and Vivian Leigh
in the same role in 1948 which was 2 hours and nineteen minutes, and
the best version in my opinion, with both telling the story without any
gimmicks.

This
version of “Anna Karenina” runs two hours and 10 minutes and the bottom
line is that it a very luxurious production and the director and writer
did try to present it in a different way but failed.

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ALSO AT GATEWAY: LINCOLN, ARGO, SKYFALL, SESSIONS

QUICK
STORY ON MYSELF--I WENT INTO AUDITORIUM AWAITING THE FILM TO START-- 5
MINUTES PAST STARTING TIME i WENT TO ASK WHAT HAPPENED--YES, I WAS IN
THE WRONG AUDITORIUM!!!
ALSO IT WAS A FREE DAY FOR ME--WITH MY GATEWAY LOYALTY CARD I HAD A FREE ADMISSION AND A FREE POPCORN AND A FREE SODA