The Russian winter sprinkled with the aristocratic splendour of Imperial Moscow and Petersburg in Leo Tolstoy’s all-time classic novel tells its extraordinary, never-ending and always challenging story. The movie “Anna Karenina”, directed by Joe Wright, from the year 2012, presents a painful drama, tension and conflict between the characters and within them. The elegance of the 70s of the 19th century and aristocratic opulence mask the great suffering and reveal the dark charms of the capital’s literary template. The presentation of the novelistic drama of dramas begins, and the book of unfulfilled and unhappy people, love, and families open.Time stands still on a giant round station clock. A Moscow railway station. is where the fatal lovers will meet for the first time. Scenic images of gentle whiteness and the darkest blackness of girls’ dresses, winter suits, fur coats and scarves, snow and ice, pearls of debauchery and silk shirts of immorality arise. Promiscuous licentiousness and marital infidelity alternate where the souls lay – on the train, railway station, ice rink, ballroom, and endless rows of red plush seats, which only can be seen in compartment coaches and theatres or cinema halls.
The main character of the heroine in the story is a hero and victim of her personal choices buried in the society of the unfree and hypocrites. Quite simply, both in Tolstoy’s novel and in the visions of this work, as well as in the movie, the character of Anna (played by Keira Knightley) dominates and culminates in the role of a woman, mother, lover, sister, and human being torn under the burden. She stands crucified on her own cross because by choosing one, she loses the other inevitably. Her socially acceptable temperament, who held back, hesitated and presented the image of a moral and decent woman due to not agreeing to lies and hypocrisy, suddenly is rejected. She gets a label and encounters social condemnation at every step. In a world that makes life a dungeon, Anna’s free spirit is waging a ruthless fight, which she knows she will eventually lose. She will end up broken and run over, not by anyone from outside but by the other Anna hiding inside her, Karenina’s alter ego.
The character of Vronsky with precision and strong feeling is the best example of a Petrograd youth who, without calculations, dared to follow his heart. Vronsky is a count at the highest level of social status, a charmer of big reputation who, surrounded by a cloud of mysticism, alternately captivates and conquers a woman’s spirit until his gaze meets the eyes of Alexei Karenin’s wife. The magnetism of Anna overcomes his macker manner, and he is immediately captured and conquered. Vronsky truly loves Anna, and His love will lead him to meet and understand the deepest and most devoted side of his being while defending the woman he loves. But on the other hand, he will not be exposed to ostracism from society, as a man of his time and rank gains more (rather than loses) on authenticity. Ana will become possessive, full of anger, jealous, wildly irritable, and in bouts of mental crises due to her imprisonment, and Aleksey will try to find a way out. The loss of Anna is the loss of his soul. His free movement will turn out to be a trap, he will face the fact that he failed to make her happy, preserve, and save her, and it will take away the meaning of his existence, the purpose of his living.
Everything becomes exhibited, reviled, exposed, and accessible to the big city – the aristocratic society looks and listens with its wide open eyes and carefully positioned ears and entirely gets involved in human happiness and shame. All secrets become public, and the audience witnesses it (does it, and on whose side is it complicit?). Also, against these and similar metropolitan scenes and alternately with them, as if from the other side of a broken mirror, the contrast, (the idyllic life in the countryside), the marriage and happiness of Kitty and Levin. The depiction of mowing described in the novel as a closeness and understanding between the classes, as an expression of the spirit of the people, an image of immediate action that is played out magically onscreen, stands out.
White silk and fur, red velvet and purple plush and black lace are the colours that dominate the scene. Luxurious costumes, capes and coats, formal suits and rich jewellery were put together and presented. The infamous ball where the two lovers met, accompanied by elegant rhythmic choreography, as well as the horse racing scene and visit to the opera, are just some of the innovative images and incredible artistic impressions that remain etched in the minds of the audience.
This story teaches us that the driving force is love behind everything – happiness and misery, life itself. The novel “Anna Karenina” by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, if approached from the point of view of the continuation of the novel in verse, “Eugene Onegin”, by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, develops the story of a married woman whose love she questions. It follows the theme of a little man and great sadness in the world of people