Anna Karenina

 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.