Director Joe Wright’s take on this Russian classic is inventive to the point of distracting.
He frames Tolstoy’s tale of a passionate woman within a genteel old theatre, with scenes playing out on and off stage, in the wings, the aisles and the rigging.
In one memorable sequence, a daring horse race is conducted on stage with the riders appearing and disappearing behind the curtains.
When a rider falls, he lands hard on the theatre floor, his horse dying at the audience’s feet.
These sequences are as puzzling as they are striking.
Presumably, we’re supposed to consider the artificiality of social constraints — everything is just for show, after all.
But we have to wonder if Wright is wise to remind us that his cast is merely actors, given that the rarely convincing Keira Knightley is his leading lady.
As it is, Knightley gives one of her strongest performances yet, though her Anna remains a little too icy for us to truly engage with.
Like his star, Wright’s film is pretty but aloof and oddly bloodless for a story rooted in deep passions.
