5 stars
i have nothing negative to say about this movie but i didn’t read the book
you know it’s funny i recently watched “The Jacket” with Keira Knightley and concluded that she can’t act worth a shit …
but somehow she rediscovered her acting ability for “Anna Karenina” … perhaps they didn’t pay her enough for “The Jacket” or they didn’t know how to direct her …
though Knightley’s performance is nowhere near as good as Vikander’s she makes up for it by being hotter …
overall all the characters make sense and are adequately acted.
i really liked how parts of the movie look like they’re shot on stage in a theater with deliberately ridiculous acting while others are shot normally with normal acting … i think it was used to good effect.
i also like how the pacing is sometimes breakneck speed and at other times really slow - they breeze through the plot and slow down so you can experience emotion.
maybe the negative reviews are because such a famous book probably has many other screen adaptations and the reviewers felt some other adaption was “better” ?
but this is the first time i see any of these “Anna Karenina” adaptations and i thought it was excellent.
i also understand why this movie was made. it was made to expose issues with traditional Christian marriage, and it succeeds in that but without injecting woke bullshit into the plot.
to sum up i think the negative reviews are due to excessively high expectations. the movie itself is excellent but perhaps it’s not what people were hoping to see.
i loved it though. i loved pretty much everything about it.
i also enjoyed the fact that background chatter and soundtrack was in Russian by real Russian speakers / singers with only the important dialogue in English. it may seem eclectic but the whole movie was shot in such eclectic fashion which i thought was brilliant.