Anna Karenina

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

What did I learn from watching this movie Anna Karenina?  Not to watch movies before I have a chance to get some of the content and purpose.  This one, even if it is a classic of Tolstoy, was not high on my list of time well spent.

This character, Anna Karenina reminded me of many women who have found themselves trapped in a society pattern which has been imposed for many centuries and discovered courage and determination to expand beyond the fear of being judged for following their deeper feelings.  However, this movie Anna Karenina was so abstract that it was nearly trite, with barely having any inspirational desires to voice except, “I am not afraid (of what they will think)” and then immediately falling prey to fear and rejection of herself and those she professed not to be afraid of.

Anna Karenina was a movie of Unique Immaturity

It appears that royalty has been displaying immaturity right along with the common levels of society for centuries, but in Anna Karenina, there was at least an attempt to show that some raised with the “royal” perspective, had some caring and warmth.  The movie, however, mainly stressed the impetuous behavior which can be fostered by time available when all is provided.  By impetuous, I again mean immature, thinking mainly of satisfying one’s own needs and desires.  It did have some twists to make us, the audience think about Anna Karenina and why she would find it necessary to ignore some thought about her behavior along with the desire to be impetuous.

If I were to rate Anna Karenina it would be at  6 out of 10

The costumes and settings were enough to earn the movie Anna Karenina a 5 of 10 as well exemplifying the time period.  The creativity of the dance, scene presentation and flashbacks gave it another percent to 6.  But the effectiveness of the plot and character development were lacking in my view.  I would have felt the movie would have served more to provoke thought if the inside of Anna Karenina could have shown some development.  There was only a superficial indication of the lack of love and attention by her official, detached, structured husband.  But the background of how she felt, and ended up to give up all for impetuousness was left to be created in my mind.  I would have preferred to have some input from Anna Karenina.