ANNA KARENINA is the story of a woman (married to a now stiff
politician played by Jude Law) who has a lustful affair with a Russian military officer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in 19th
century Russia while she dreams of suicide by train. The movie has great costume design and production design,
and beautiful cinematography. Too bad the movie is a plodding mess that makes you wish Anna would just kill herself
so the movie would be over. It is a downer that feels longer than two hours- it feels like three or four hours.
ANNA KARENINA does also focus on other couples, but their stories are even less interesting than the cnetral love triangle
as the movie treies to be a morality tale about sin, love, lust, forgiveness, and how 1870s society shunned married women
who had affairs.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
ANNA KARENINA: AN EPIC STORY ABOUT LOVE- promotional featurette on the
movie. This featurette and the other five fetaure interviews with cast and crew in addition to clips from the film and
behind-the-scenes footage.
ADAPTING TOLSTOY- how they made this adaptation different from
the other film adaptations
KEIRA AS ANNA- This featurette basically says Keira was the only
one they considered to play Anna and Keira sums up how she loved and hated the character.
ON SET WITH DIRECTOR JOE WRIGHT- the cast say how great it is
to work with the director
DRESING ANNA- this featurette goes over on how they combined modern
fashion with the 1870s fashion to create the various costumes for the characters.
ANNA KARENINA: TIME LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY- time lapse of the sets being
built.
A few deleted scenes cut for pacing are included and they
would have dragged this movie on even longer.
Audio commentary with director Joe Wright.
FINAL ANALYSIS: ANNA KARENINA is beautiful to look at as a film,
but the story just plods on as I wonder what they could have done to make it more exciting than the plodding downer I watched.
The extras are more exciting and shorter than the movie that felt too long even at two hours.
this DVD review is (c)2-22-2013 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted
without permission. send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com
