In the hush of a London editing suite, Joe Wright revisits the opening title card: Anna Karenina - 2012 . He knows the world expects lush, sprawling fields. Instead, he offers a theater. Dust motes dance in a single spotlight illuminating a worn, red velvet curtain.
Act Three is the collapse. The stage itself begins to rot. Scenery tilts. Anna is confined to a single dressing room, her mirror showing a woman she no longer knows. The train station in the final scene is the same flat from the beginning, but now the painted train shudders with real steam, its whistle a raw scream. As the lights flicker and die, Anna lies still on the tracks, a discarded costume among discarded dreams. anna karenina -2012
It is 2012, but the Russia he conjures is a decaying imperial stage. The aristocrats are players, their lives confined to the wings, the pit, the proscenium. Anna (Keira Knightley) steps not onto a train platform but a stage flat painted to look like one. Snow falls not from a Russian sky but from the fly tower, a soft, tragic flutter. Her first meeting with the dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is choreographed like a waltz, the other extras freezing mid-stride, their purpose only to frame the forbidden glance. In the hush of a London editing suite,