Anna Karenina, a novel by Leo Tolstoy, is a masterpiece of world literature. Anna Karenina, a movie with Keira Knightly as Anna has not even been nominated for the Oscar for the best motion picture. That should speak volumes about the quality ratio. I knew that no movie could compare to Tolstoy’s storytelling genius, exquisite characterization, and interweaved spiritual elements. Still, I hoped the film would reach a higher level, and I will not exit the movie theater completely disappointed.
The first sentence in Anna
Karenina declares: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its way.” This is the theme of this voluminous novel. The book is
not only a story about the infidelity of one woman from Russian high society
and her love affair with an officer of Tzar’s Russia. It is a story about three
families, two of them being fundamentally unhappy because of similar and yet
different reasons, and the third being a happy one. We are talking about Anna’s
own family, her brother Stiva’s family, and the family of Stiva’s fried Levin.
Part of Tolstoy’s literary genius
lies in the fact that he has mastered the art of intermingling of three
separate plots (in this case, the lives of these three families) that could
easily create its own independent story and become a novel of its own. The
movie is completely lacking this important element. The focus is on Anna and
her lover. Stiva and Levin appear, but their lives are not mentioned in any
significant way. In the case of Stiva that may make sense, but contrary to the
opinion of many, Tolstoy’s novel does not end with Anna’s death. Almost one-third
of the book is dedicated to Levin, his country life, his relationship with his
wife and brother, and his search for the meaning of life. Two scenes from his
life are entirely inadequate and insufficient to describe everything Tolstoy
had to say that through this character.
The story goes like this. Levin
is a landowner who, after an initial failure, in the end, wins the love of a
young, sweet, innocent, and lovely Kitty (who was portrayed well in the movie).
Before their wedding, desiring to be completely honest, Levin decides to
confess two things to her. First, that she will not be the first woman with
whom he will share his bed, and second that he does not believe in God. Kitty
has a hard time accepting both those facts but manages to overcome them because
she sees him as an honest, truthful, and righteous man. And he was all those things,
but he could not comprehend the meaning of life nor why people believe in God.
Only after he starts his own family, spends a lot of time reflecting and
working the land, at one moment of deep reflection God reveals Himself to him
as somebody real who exist, and who has given him everything he has. I remember
reading this before I experienced that kind of revelation and wondering how can
a person change so suddenly and start believing in something that he used to
reject. In fact, he wasn’t really rejecting God; he was trying to understand
Him in a society that has distorted His image with its hypocrisy.
And the hypocrisy of Russian high
society is another major theme of this book. I must admit the movie portrays it
rather well. Anna, who commits adultery,
certainly was not the only one within that society that has done so. Marriage
infidelities were a common thing, but a public one. Everybody cheats on their
husbands and wives, but it is all hidden behind the mask of hypocrisy,
politeness, and honor. Anna’s adultery is public because she leaves her husband
so she could live with her lover. Suddenly she finds herself rejected by
everybody, even by women who, at the very beginning, encouraged their
flirtations. Two people are the epitome of that hypocrisy. One of them is Countess
Vronsky, the mother of her lover. She tells him that it is perfectly normal,
even educational for a young officer to have an affair with a married woman.
However, insisting on embarrassing himself because of her and losing his honor
is a total idiotism. The other is Vronsky’s sister in law whom he asked to at
least visit Anna, who felt rejected and started to lose her mind. Her reply to
that request was: “I would visit her if she had only broken the law, but she
had broken the rules.” The rules of high society were more important than the
law, God’s commandments, and the fate of the human soul.
Finally, the thing that bothered
me most in this movie is the characterization of protagonists. Although toward
the end we can see some development; at the beginning of the movie, Anna and
Vronsky give us the impression of two high school kids who have no idea what
life is and are being led by hormones. Tolstoy’s Anna is torn between her marriage and
family and the man she loves. She does not commit adultery easily or on a whim.
Her struggles and torments are present before and after her adultery. She is
tortured because she is unable to see her son whom she loves dearly. She also
feels guilty for what she has done to her husband, although he was a cold man
who cared more about his honor than his wife. At one moment, I had a desire to
come and slap him in the face because he is not fighting for her; because he is
not the kind of husband who would go and punch Vronsky in the face and forbid
him from coming near her, let alone touching her. Ana is torn because she knows
she is doing something wrong, but she cannot fight it. And in the end, unable
to live with constant guilt, judgment, and rejection of society, far away from
everybody, closed in her world with nobody but Vronsky by her side, she finds
no more reason to live and throws herself under the train. That is the
character in Tolstoy’s novel. The character in the movie is more like a spoiled
girl. Vronsky is, on the other hand, lacking any charm, firmness, or anything
else that would make a married beauty want to sacrifice her marriage. In the book,
he did not seem so empty and pathetic – at least not to me.
In conclusion, if you have read
the book, do not watch the movie. If not, you can watch it, but I highly
recommend reading the book – all 800
pages of it.