On face value the new film version of Anna Karenina, directed by Bernard Rose, offers a refreshingly sojourn into non-Hollywood territory. The film is an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel, one of the great masterpieces of Russian literature. However, its somewhat difficult to ascertain this fact from the film. The film has been shrunk down to 108 minutes, and yet still attempts to cover all eight hundred pages of Tolstoy's novel. Consequently the events whiz by in a blur of love, death, funerals, and simpering music. Its all rather pitiful actually. The film is so jammed with events it fails to capture any depth of characterization.

        The story concerns a woman named Anna, her husband Karenin and her lover Count Vronsky. There are a few other characters scattered about, for example, the narrator, a character called Levin, who represents Tolstoy and his quest for answers about the ultimate meaning of life. Levin, played by Alfred Molina, is probably the only character with any plausibility in the film, and even that is slender.

        The other characters do not fare well at all. James Fox is far too much the proper English chap to be convincing as Karenin. His dialogue is awkward and affected. After Anna returns home from a journey to Moscow, Karenin expresses how pleased he is she has returned by commenting that it is "irksome" to eat alone. Irksome and Russia don't gel in my book. A similar problem occurs with Levin's brother, who is overly British. When Levin comes to visit, he bids his woman to provide them with a meal, saying "Lets have some supper, then" in an accent and manner that might be taken straight from the Nick Park's claymation characters Wallace and Gromit.

        Anna, played by Sophie Marceau, is not at all British. Instead she tots a European accent and a pair of continually injured looking eyes. Even if you don't know the story, you can quickly guess the fate of this wounded looking pigeon. To give the film its dues, the costumes, scenery, and jewelery are particularly splendid. Indeed, if the whole movie suddenly became a ballet version of Anna Karenina it might have been much better.

        Except for the fact that the music is laughable. The score is a compilation of Tschaikowsky and Rachmaninoff that is so overdone it is deliciously comical. The lovers, Anna and Vronsky are plagued everywhere they go by the fate theme from Tchaikovsky's Symphony # 6, known as the Pathetique. There's a subtle difference between Pathetique and Pathetic, but this film score is well and truly the latter. Not only does the music shamelessly attempt to milk the emotions of the audience, but it is also ludicrously out of place. The film chronicles the time the story occurs, beginning in 1891 and moving through 1893. Tschaikovsky didn't write the 6th symphony until 1893, and Rachmaninoff was still in grade school.

        And just in case you miss the point of this story, Anna is continually paralleled with the heroine of Tchaikovky's opera Eugene Onegin even though their stories are the exactly opposite. Thus, Anna Karenina is a delightful visually but disappointing in every other respect.

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