Joe Wright's film of Anna Karenina applies the look and feel of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge to Imperial Russia in the 1870s. All scenes where Russia's high society appear in public are given a theatrical setting which highlights the sense that their lives are played out in public according to a rigorously enforced society script. It is this that Anna breaks through her affair with Vronsky and the sense that one cannot depart from one's allotted part is conveyed well throughout, particularly in the scene when Anna attempts to retake her place in the audience at the Opera.
The staginess of these scenes could easily have hampered the film's narrative but the scene transitions are genuinely creative and maintain the flow of the story. The focus is on Anna's alternative role - the assertive woman choosing love over status - and the tragic consequences of such choices in that day and time. Yet Wright does not neglect the other alternative that Tolstoy presents in the novel and the realism of Levin harvesting alongside his peasants and Kitty washing the fevered body of Levin's brother eloquently reveals the power of love by means of its contrast with the artificiality inherent in the theatre of high society.
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Dario Marianelli - Dance With Me.
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