Anna's story seems likely to happen in every age, every country. Apart from those with a strong moral stance, attitudes toward extramarital affairs are also shifting. A friend of mine said that when she was watching the 97th version of the movie, she was very embarrassed about Anna's love with Wolowski; in the 12th version of "Anna Karenina" in history, she had nothing to do with Anna's derailment and fate. No sympathy. Her stance is based on acting and acting, a victory for Sophie Marceau over Keira Knightley (and possibly Jude Law as Karenin in the 12th edition). In fact, when the cast list was announced, I was very suspicious of Keira - this beauty who is used to acting in costume dramas is too modern and tough; but there is no way, who made her the favorite of director Joe White. A few years ago, in the grasp of the second lady of "Pride and Prejudice", Keira seemed aggressive, but fortunately, her youth and beauty helped her a lot; and in this play, Anna's kind of touching Wolosky ( Or maybe Toon himself) the shy and gentle temperament is gone. In the second half of the hysteria, several female audience members around me scolded Anna unceremoniously as "nervous" and "deserving"...
However, to truly understand Anna's story, one must return to Tolstoy's beliefs. I think those modern people who take divorce as a matter of course, have no faith and no awe, can't really understand Anna's suicide - they may regard the relationship between Anna and Wolowski as another Polanski "bitter" "Moon" style story; the difference is that Anna, as a married person, had to pay a heavy price for it in the social environment at that time: family, status, beloved son...
Today, a derailed Anna for love may not Therefore, it is cornered, but the crisis behind it is the same. Anna's tragedy is that she desperately put love as God, and when love came to an end, Anna's world was turned upside down. So, she ends up with a disgust with the world ("It's all hypocrisy, it's all lies, it's all deceit, it's all sin!") and the guilt of not being able to face God (cries out "God, forgive me everything" ), took her own life - this is where Anna truly evokes sympathy and compassion.
Tolstoy's position is actually reflected in the character of Levin. In the movie, the director just let Levin express his views vaguely at the dinner table - disapproval of the lust of the flesh, which is likely to make people misunderstand that Levin is just a rationalist. In the novel, however, Latour, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer give Levin no consolation at all. He didn't have the experience of Anna, a "happy, family, able-bodied man who was on the verge of suicide several times" because he couldn't find meaning in his life.
Finally Levin got an answer from a farmer. The answer is to live for God. Although Levin still loses his temper, argues with people, and expresses his opinions inappropriately, he finds the supreme joy that is irreplaceable and unchangeable. This is what Anna can't find in Wolowski's "love". It's not that Wolowski's love is not deep and long enough, but that a person with limited guilt cannot be another person's God. Likewise, Karenin could not be God by virtue of his own reason and temperance. I feel no less sympathy for Karenin than I do for Anna, especially when I see him struggling to follow biblical principles and accept his betrayal wife. Our heavy flesh is always holding us back, or we are willingly seduced by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life (like Anna and Wolowski); God's approval to become a moral person (like Karenin).
Such a divine story is something that movies cannot tell us. So in the end, when the farmer asks Levin whether you are marrying a wife based on rational love, Levin's sudden realization will be misunderstood as an exaltation of emotions. But if so, how can we explain Anna's tragedy? The belief in the cross has long been reduced to Christian culture, so we will see the most luxurious and frivolous stage adaptations in the movie, see Jude Law in the midst of the wind and grass and don't know what kind of expression to put on, see The writers and directors ultimately didn't get Levin to tell his wife what he had learned—perhaps they simply couldn't give him reliable lines.
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