K.M. Kaung's review of Anna Karenina - the movie -

I saw Anna Karenina - the movie - on pay per view with my friend Adrienne - neither of us liked it.

It started in a very strange theatrical way, with "tick tock" music and a metaphor for the rubber stamp bureaucracy of Russia before 1917.  (This was a bit like the circumlocution office in Dickens' Little Dorrit).

I am used to seeing movies that don't live up to the book, and Tolstoy is surely hard to live up to.

The screenplay is by Tom Stoppard.

I was gratified to see that the count had the "front teeth like spades" that Tolstoy described,

and the scene with the letter blocks in which the minor characters (said to be based on Tolstoy and his wife's courtship) - was sweet enough -

however, I never saw Anna in the dress with the white lace around her throat that Tolstoy described, and even though Keira Knightly looked gorgeous,

her pain did not come through so well - and I think it is because of the "devicey" presentation

everything on a stage - and choppy movements.

The train theme was handled OK, I thought.

Maybe we will have better luck with the Greta Garbo old version.

Kyi May Kaung