In the past few months our blog has been host to many posts about book to film adaptations. You read about The Perks of Being a Wallflower’s safe and easy transition onto the big screen, as well as Cloud Atlas’ more risky adaptation. Today we bring you yet another adaptation story, again along the risky line, with Joe Wright’s new film Anna Karenina.
Joe Wright, known particularly for his work with Keira Knightley in such projects as Atonement, and Pride and Prejudice, has made himself famous adapting classic books to film. What makes Wright so special, however, is his ability to do so seamlessly, cutting the film down to time constraint, but maintaining the ambiance and feel of the original novel. Perhaps it is the way that he directs his actors, his attention to historical detail, or his decisions of cinematography that maintain these “bookish” qualities in his films—but some would argue that it is something else entirely. Critics like Paul French would argue that it is Wright’s innovation which he brings to classic stories that is at the heart of his success in book to film adaptations.
Perhaps it is this innovative spirit that inspired Wright to veer away from “another conventional version of a familiar literary classic,” and instead to produce a highly unique version of the novel Anna Karenina. Wright does not simply change an aspect of lighting or dialogue in his adaptation, but instead centers the entire film Anna Karenina “in and around a Russian theatre in the 1870s.” Phillip French sums up the thinking behind this innovation:
“His intention was to create a large-scale image of upper-class tsarist society. This symbolic theatre is a place of dramatic performance and moral judgment, a forum where aristocrats gather to see and be seen, to observe and to censure. It is not clear where the notion came from, but one infers that the thought struck Wright after his disappointing discovery that all the obvious locations for the film had become so familiar that something was desperately needed to justify and enliven his project.”
Thus, while typical scenes in the novel might take place in a Moscow Ballroom, or the St. Petersburg council chamber, they instead take place in the “pit of the auditorium,” and the “opera house” respectively.
The readers and lovers of the book must of course decide whether or not this new take on the literary classic is effective. However, Wright’s depiction of Anna Karenina undoubtedly will provide moviegoers with a brand new perspective, and perhaps a more theatrical and dramatic feel than the book alone can provide. But don’t take my word for it; go see it for yourselves!
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