What do you think of the cast of the new Anna Karenina film?

[kelby_lake]

Joe Wright is apparantly going to direct a new version in 2012. What are your thoughts on the cast?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1781769/board/threads/

I don't have too much of a problem with Keira Knightly. She looks right although I'm not sure how well she could pull off neurotic passion. Aaron Johnson is still practically a boy so who knows why he's been cast as Vronsky. Jude Law might have made a better, if perhaps a little bland, Vronsky but for some bizarre reason he's been cast as Karenin! Yes, Karenin who is supposed to be in his late 50's and past the point of being sexually attractive. Law is famous for playing pretty boys. Would anyone really leave Law for Johnson? I think not.

On the plus side, I think Saiorse Ronan might make a good Kitty.

[Alexander III]

Actually I totally see Law as being able to pull off a great Karenin, but I can't see Knightly as Anna for some reason.

I am curious who will play Levin, I can't think of anyone famous who seems right for the part.

Also wouldn't Downy Junior have been an amazing choice for Oblonski.

[dfloyd]

why make another movie of this oft remade story? The original movie had a great cast with Greta Garbo as Anna; Fredrick March as Vronsky; and Sherlock Holmes errrr, rather Basil Rathbone as Karenin.This all star cast probably can't be beat.

Also, the BBC has made a miniseries of the book, along with the one by Masterpiece Theatre. These give the proper amount of time for a classic adaptaton. But a movie .... which at best will be no longer than 140 miutes.... why bother.

But to cater to the youth ....the only ones who go to movies these days .... maybe Hollywood will make Vronsky into a rock star and Karenin into an aging opera tenor with Anna a no-longer-young ballerina with the role going to Barbara Streisand. A rock musical of Anna Karenina may be the only salvation for this movie to be.

[Intuition]

A better question would be-- why would a maniac make a film based on an 850 page masterpiece which is hailed by critics for its depth of detail? The simple answer being, money.

[Playtime]

A better question would be-- why would a maniac make a film based on an 850 page masterpiece which is hailed by critics for its depth of detail? The simple answer being, money.

Yep. Money and lack of ingenuity/originality. They want something that can make money and is relatively low risk, and the common way to do this is sequels/adaptations/prequels/remakes/reboots.

[kelby_lake]

Actually I totally see Law as being able to pull off a great Karenin, but I can't see Knightly as Anna for some reason.

I am curious who will play Levin, I can't think of anyone famous who seems right for the part.

Also wouldn't Downy Junior have been an amazing choice for Oblonski.

From that list, looks like it might be Domnall Gleeson, who was in some of the Harry Potter films. Rumours were that it was going to be Benedict Cumberbatch but his schedule clashed. Personally I think Cumberbatch might have been quite good.

[kelby_lake]

Actually I totally see Law as being able to pull off a great Karenin.

How? I can't see how a young Karenin would work. A lot of the comments on, well, all the movie adaptations is that the reviewer doesn't know why Anna would choose Vronsky over Karenin. If the reviewer can't see a reason, it makes the character of Anna very unsympathetic. Karenin being a bit mean is not really a reason why Anna would have an affair. It's not as if Vronsky is Mr Warm and Cuddly.

I think the age gap between Anna and Karenin is important, and that there should be a noticeable one. In the novel there's a twenty-year age gap- a pretty hard gap to bridge even if Karenin wasn't aloof. Besides, I like Karenin- I see their problem not as him being mean but as him feeling awkward about the age gap and then eventually guilty because he realises that by marrying Anna, he has killed the youth in her. He doesn't realise that the lack of a sexual relationship would have such an effect on her. I can't buy Law as frigid, or a pitiful figure.

[Ecurb]

Keira Knightly is one of the worst actors in history. Boo, hiss!

[farnoosh]

I have to disagree with that! I think keira could actully make it work,just like she did in Pride and Prejudice.I feel that she could easily play that charachter since i think playing Lizy Bennet is harder than playing Anna(IMO).

[Alexander III]

A better question would be-- why would a maniac make a film based on an 850 page masterpiece which is hailed by critics for its depth of detail? The simple answer being, money.

As opposed to most classic literature which was written with the scope of creating high art, as they couldn't care less about money....

Well if you're a Tolstoy or a Byron you couldn't care less about money indeed, due to luck of birth

But most "canonic" writers wrote for money, like most films are made for money.

So if we judge Hollywood, we must judge people like Zola, Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare in equal measure.

[Alexander III]

How? I can't see how a young Karenin would work. A lot of the comments on, well, all the movie adaptations is that the reviewer doesn't know why Anna would choose Vronsky over Karenin. If the reviewer can't see a reason, it makes the character of Anna very unsympathetic. Karenin being a bit mean is not really a reason why Anna would have an affair. It's not as if Vronsky is Mr Warm and Cuddly.

I think the age gap between Anna and Karenin is important, and that there should be a noticeable one. In the novel there's a twenty-year age gap- a pretty hard gap to bridge even if Karenin wasn't aloof. Besides, I like Karenin- I see their problem not as him being mean but as him feeling awkward about the age gap and then eventually guilty because he realises that by marrying Anna, he has killed the youth in her. He doesn't realise that the lack of a sexual relationship would have such an effect on her. I can't buy Law as frigid, or a pitiful figure.

For some reason I can see Law perfectly playing the cold frigid over rational and uber beaurocratic machine like Karenin. I don't know why, but I can see him doing it very well.

[Intuition]

As opposed to most classic literature which was written with the scope of creating high art, as they couldn't care less about money....

Well if you're a Tolstoy or a Byron you couldn't care less about money indeed, due to luck of birth

But most "canonic" writers wrote for money, like most films are made for money.

So if we judge Hollywood, we must judge people like Zola, Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare in equal measure.

To compare Shakespeare's motivation behind art to that of Hollywood is tantamount to comparing Shakespeare's motivation behind art to Agatha Christie, or any other writer of dime novels. Perhaps you also believe that when a director such as Michael Bay directs a film filled with verbal automatons, starring a male with flawless physique and a lingerie model whom both end up saving the world, that he looked upon his art form with the same keen eye as Shakespeare had centuries earlier.

Such individuals as Zola or Dostoevsky did not resort to artistic prostitution in accordance to make capital gain. They stayed faithful to their style, as these filmmakers prefer "adapting" styles. I will not insult all adaptations, as there are some filmmakers who can make greater art of a novel than it was before, such as Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey... but when you attempt to recreate what the majority of writers alive on this Earth claimed as the greatest novel of all time onto film, then that is blasphemous.

[kelby_lake]

I will not insult all adaptations, as there are some filmmakers who can make greater art of a novel than it was [...]but when you attempt to recreate what the majority of writers alive on this Earth claimed as the greatest novel of all time onto film, then that is blasphemous.

The art forms all have a symbiotic relationship. Sometimes it results in disaster (take the musical version of Gone With the Wind, which was savaged by critics), sometimes it produces classic pieces of art (the film of Gone With The Wind).

The aim of adapting novels is not necessarily to improve them- whenever that is the aim, the film normally fails (take the 2009 film of Brideshead Revisited). Film versions of Anna Karenina will never be able to do full justice to the novel- there's simply so much in it- but they can be good films in their own right. I'm looking forward to it (Tom Stoppard's doing the screenplay) but the casting of this 2012 film is dubious and I don't entirely trust Joe Wright, considering that he destroyed Pride and Prejudice.


EDIT: I think the link I originally gave leads to the message boards so here's the main page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1781769/

[mal4mac]

Stoppard, rightly, will not get any plaudits from the serious critics if it's a standard adaptation! He can get away with adapting inferior novels:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/thea...tv-parades-end

But films of the greatest novels never compare to the original works. So what's Stoppard up to? It's difficult to see why a serious artist, like him, would attempt such an endeavour. If he stays close to Tolstoy's original plot he can only look bad by comparison, however good the film is! Maybe he is going to try and go off at a tangent as he did with "R&G are dead" - a worthy secondary work *based on* Hamlet.

[Alexander III]

To compare Shakespeare's motivation behind art to that of Hollywood is tantamount to comparing Shakespeare's motivation behind art to Agatha Christie, or any other writer of dime novels. Perhaps you also believe that when a director such as Michael Bay directs a film filled with verbal automatons, starring a male with flawless physique and a lingerie model whom both end up saving the world, that he looked upon his art form with the same keen eye as Shakespeare had centuries earlier.

Such individuals as Zola or Dostoevsky did not resort to artistic prostitution in accordance to make capital gain. They stayed faithful to their style, as these filmmakers prefer "adapting" styles. I will not insult all adaptations, as there are some filmmakers who can make greater art of a novel than it was before, such as Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey... but when you attempt to recreate what the majority of writers alive on this Earth claimed as the greatest novel of all time onto film, then that is blasphemous.

Shakespeare did resort to artistic prostitution - had he done what he wanted to, he would have written solely poetry. But there was no money in poems, so he wrote plays(the were considered the cultural equivalent of television nowadays). He wrote plays, he made them beautiful and he earned a fair amount of money. And you complain about Michael Bay using lots of explosions and beautiful naked girls? Shakespeare did the elizabethan equivalent. Every play is full of sword fights and sexual puns, lots of gore and death. Exactly what the Elizabethan masses wanted, like our masses want explosions and sexy girls in bikinis.

So before you criticize Hollywood know that you criticize most art by extension.

Raphael, Michelangelo and Da Vinci - do you think they were religious fanatics who only desired painting religious paintings. If they could have they probably would have painted about many things - but the majority of their art is religious iconography, why? Because the church had the cash - so in effect they to artistically prostituted themselves. Much like all the other of thousands of their contemporary painters - they all knew that a starving painter was useless.