Anna Karenina

This 1948 version of the Tolstoy novel is a sumptuously designed and beautifully photographed film, but it’s also the kind of elephantine literary adaptation that makes people roll their eyes and hate the entire genre outright. Sure, it’s positively lovely to look at, but it never quite takes off, remaining too remote, cold and detached for its own good to properly get us invested in Anna’s doomed and pre-destined march towards her ultimate fate.

The coldness wouldn’t have been an issue if we could have invested and believed in the central love triangle, but with all of the effort going in to the sets, costumes and lighting, I guess nothing was left over to give to the story. Leigh does her best with what little the director has given her, but she can’t overcome the obstacles involved in this hyper-tearjerker. In order for this story to work we have to have some passion and life involved. Think of the way that Garbo could invest so much into her version’s personal relationships with just a smile for her son, an erotic glance for Vronsky or a detached stare at her husband. That spoke volumes about the underpinnings and plights of the characters, and here we have none of that. It’s a very British affair with their emotions always kept at a distance and never coming even close to the surface for much of the film. I blame the director since the pacing is enervating. By the end I felt like somnambulist slowly staring at the screen waiting for the final moments to come.

And Leigh, in those final moments, creates something truly magical. It’s the only time in the film when the direction and performance come together to make something harmonious and beautiful. In a stylistic framing, Leigh’s Anna walks around the train station talking to herself, slowly acknowledging her madness and methodically walking towards the tracks. She pitches her voice deeper and with empathetic objectivity decides her fate. What was a kind of wishy-washy performance ends on a note of sheer triumph and haunting beauty. Instead of Garbo’s methodical planning and clear-headed thinking, we have an Anna that has slipped into depression, madness, destitution and isolation. Both readings of her final moments work wonderfully. This is a film that plods along assuming it’s own greatness because of the sheer opulence and finally shakes off the boredom and rallies itself to sock you in the gut with a sucker punch of pure visual poetry in the finale. If only the preceding hour and forty-some odd minutes could have matched that power.