As with a number of other famous novels, the broad outlines of the plot of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" are well-known even to many people who have not read the original book. A beautiful, vivacious young woman, unhappily married to a dull older man, begins an adulterous affair with a dashing young man, but fails to find happiness through adultery and ends up committing suicide. Actually, that could also be the plot of a number of other 19th century novels; my above synopsis would, for example, also fit Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", except that Emma Bovary had two lovers rather than one.
Tolstoy's novel has been adapted for the cinema and for television many times, and I watched this version when it was shown recently for the purposes of comparison with Joe Wright's interpretation from last year. (The only other version I have seen was that old Greta Garbo one from the 1930s). Although this is quite a long film, at around 2½ hours, the story as told here is very much abridged from the original novel. The Levin/Kitty subplot is virtually omitted, and Levin does not even appear, although Kitty is an important character in the early scenes because of her unrequited love for Vronsky.
Wright's version had two major faults in my eyes. One was his eccentric concept of presenting the action as though it were taking place on a stage, something which seemed to waste a lot of the potential of Tolstoy's story. More than just a domestic tragedy, it is also a grand epic of Russian society in the late nineteenth century, and Wright's film only fitfully captured this sense of epic grandeur. The second was that, apart from Jude Law's Karenin, none of the main parts were particularly well acted. Keira Knightley's Anna was bland, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson seemed totally miscast as Vronsky, less a sophisticated man of the world than a schoolboy desperately trying to grow his first moustache.
This TV film, by contrast, is made in a straightforward "heritage drama" style, and there are no gimmicks for the sake of trying to be different. The acting is also better. Jacqueline Bisset as Anna occasionally commits the sin of failing to speak her lines clearly enough, but on a deeper level she leaves us in no doubt that this is a woman in the grip of powerful, and potentially tragic emotions, something which did not always come through clearly in Knightley's interpretation. The late Christopher Reeve is, of course, best remembered as Superman, but he also had a sideline in costume drama, and this is one of a number of such films in which he acted. (Others include "Somewhere in Time", "The Bostonians" and "The Remains of the Day"). He came much closer to my idea of a handsome, dashing Russian aristocrat and cavalry officer than did Taylor-Johnson. From today's viewpoint it is painful to watch the scene where Vronsky falls from a horse during a race, as it recalls Reeve's own tragic riding accident ten years later which was to leave him paralysed. It was, apparently, while preparing for this movie that he first learned how to ride.
As I stated above, I felt that Jude Law gave the best acting performance in Wright's version, but here that great actor Paul Scofield is even better. The two interpretations are quite different. Law's Karenin is not altogether unsympathetic, being neither a stony-hearted villain nor religious hypocrite, merely the sort of respectably decent husband who can inspire respect but not love. Scofield, by contrast, is cold and reptilian, a man devoid of passions unless possessiveness and vindictiveness can be regarded as such.
This version has its faults; I think it would have been better if room had been found for Levin, one of Tolstoy's major characters. Nevertheless, I found it better than Wright's film, if only because it shows that, sometimes, the best way to tell a story-in the cinema as in other media- is to do so in a straightforward way, without the need to be too clever or to resort to gimmicks. 7/10
