nemo_cinema

The film is wonderful. Acting is superb but is this the real Pasternak story? I read the novel after I watched the movie and I was shocked to see so many outrageous distortions to the story. Characters, events and places are often interchanged simply for the sake of performances by the actors and sometimes to give cinematographic effects, both of which were exploited to the fullest extent. More than half of the story is missing. What forms the core theme, the Russian revolution, is nowhere in the film. Lean was masterful in chopping off anything that does not fit into his version of Doctor Zhivago, the love story of Lara and Zhivago (that's all he wanted to depict) with all the snow covered houses and the famous theme tune on balalaika, the balalaika which never existed in the original story.

The thing is that everything clicked. The artistic touch is not missing here. But it missed the point, the main focus of the story. What we saw is just a mushy romantic tragedy of two people who did not meet each other. People should see the movie and read the novel and then criticize the movie.

It's time directors should refrain from distorting the language of literature (not just some best selling silly fiction). With expensive sets, historic backdrop, all kinds of grandeur and glamorous actresses they simply forget what the main story is all about. And things go absolutely disastrous when do the same kind of treatment to Tolstoy (one of the greatest authors the world of literature has ever seen).

This is absolute audacity. Anna Karenina is not just a story of a naive infidel wife. And when there is an attempt to fit in just a few snapshots within those few hours all you get is a bogus piece of movie like this. It's meaningless to talk about how the movie did not match up to the novel. Watching this movie is just another (silly) experience of costumes and glamorous sets; like watching a fashion show and nothing else.

I am still wondering how I managed to sit through the entire movie. Story - bizarre.... Acting - no comments please .....

A bizarre relationship between a 13 old kid and an imbecile married woman. All she does is knitting sitting topless. An equally imbecile husband who finds the third imbecile in the movie to make love to his wife. A bored housewife who falls in love after a car wreck; it was upside down but she was intact enough to have sex with the first stranger that passes by. Come on!!!!! This is French slapstick for you folks.... I have no idea how come people give it a rating over 2-3. I rated it 1/10 because I couldn't rate it lesser. in my opinion it's -7 out of 10.