review for Anna Karenina on AllMovie

In this 2000 TV production, British actress Helen McCrory portrays Anna Karenina as Tolstoy wrote her: a woman tormented by passion, guilt, jealousy, and social degradation. When scandal isolates Anna from her son and her disapproving acquaintances, McCrory writes the tale of Anna's woes in the dark circles under her eyes and in the volatility of her temperament. Eventually,McCrory's Anna shows the viewer hell on earth, relieved only by her fleeting moments of ecstasy in the arms of her lover, Count Vronsky, portrayed by Kevin McKidd. There appears to be a discordance between the two actors, a lack of chemistry that prompted some reviewers to criticize their performances. But perhaps that discordance is precisely what Tolstoy intended for Anna. After all, nothing is ever quite right for her; she reaches for roses and touches the thorns. Because the film is long (four hours), director David Blair has the time to develop the important parallel love affair and marriage between Kitty Paloma Baeza, who is pure of heart and innocently pretty, and Constantine Levin Douglas Henshall, who is shy and introspectively handsome. Levin, who represents Tolstoy and his views, undergoes a religious crisis -- doubting the existence of God -- but resolves it, finding peace and happiness with his wife in the country, away from the corruption of the city. Director Blair also gives due attention to other motifs in the novel: the hypocrisy of the aristocrats who condemn Anna for improprieties in which they indulge in secret; the corrupting influence of Western ideas that arrive symbolically as steam locomotives; the redemptive power of the faith which Levin and Kitty pledge toward each other. Although set in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Anna Karenina was filmed in Poland. However, in this film, Poland makes a convincing Russia -- thanks, in part, to the period Russian costumes, the Orthodox icons, and the tolling bells. Overall, this 2000 adaptation of Anna Karenina is a worthy production with enough good acting to hold the interest of viewers who have read the novel and know Anna's fate.