#AnnaKarenina -- a pygmy review: Not since #JulieTaymor's #Titus has a film so boldly and so beautifully fused the aesthetics of cinema with those of the stage. Never has a film so wondrously used the artifice of the thing on which we view make believe as the crucial component for that make believe. All the world's a stage, proclaimed the bard, and "Anna Karenina" takes that idea, infuses it with the most luxurious music and costume design (one cannot help but recall #DavidLean's sumptuous #DoctorZhivago), and presents, quite literally, a morality play. The film delights in confounding our ability to choose who is righteous hero and who is narcissistic villain. In truth, such aspects war within us all. But we realize too late, as does the film's namesake, that she--she who just wants to be happy, she who just wants to be loved--is the wicked one. Anna turns natural, even reasonable, emotions into an egomaniacal excuse to engineer her own joy at the expense of the joy of those around her. She builds her happiness atop the agony of others. She whose name adorns the spine of the novel and the theater marquee destroys in the selfish pursuit of pleasure while we come to see, in the end, that the true protagonists of the story were those we never saw coming--those who live their lives committed to something higher than themselves. Director #JoeWright's diminished returns are at an end.

http://youtu.be/rPGLRO3fZnQ

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