The Book Versus The Movie: Anna Karenina

The movie Anna Karenina is a disaster. The book on the other hand is a study of love and betrayal as well as many other things. It’s made up of fantastic dialogue and smooth switches between points of view of multiple characters. It explores controversies that stay as relatable today as they once were. Unfortunately while the book preserves the Russian style for the romantic without seeming fake, this film does the exact opposite.

Anna Karenina consists of two stories going on in the movie. The first surrounds Anna Karenina who is trapped in a dull marriage with Alexei Karenin. She is unhappy yet calm. When Vronsky comes in, Anna gets herself into an affair. She abandons her husband and child. Her affair leads to the decline of her health both mental and physical which leads to her death. The second plot surrounds Konstantin Levin. Levin is tired and lonely. He tries to make Kitty Scherbatsky his wife and start a family. Kitty rejects him but eventually decides to marry him. After they get married and have a son but Levin finds he is still unhappy. He eventually approaches a religious awakening and becomes happy.

The overall tone of the book versus the movie is that the book is suspenseful while the movie does not portray that. Anna’s affair and her suicide are written powerfully in the book, but the movie doesn’t do it’s justice. Tolstoy’s use of suspense in the book at the most dramatic moments, such as Anna telling her husband that she is having an affair is very powerful. It makes the reader want to keep reading to find out what happens. During the movie I was bored. They did not underline the plot at all and it felt extremely dry.

I believe that the movie seemed to paint Anna as a somewhat bad character. In the book, Anna is not really bad, she just undermines the impact of her actions and decisions. Anna is a fallen romantic. I felt that I did not see that at all in the movie. Anna is an extremely complicated character but the movie version depicts Anna as a helpless woman. She is meant to realize her downward slump is coming because she is extremely depressed. However, these elements are never noticeable in the movie. In the book the death of the railway track worker serves as a turning point for Anna, but this scene is extremely rushed in the movie and made me feel like it was not as significant at all.

In my opinion, the worst wrongdoing Vronsky. In the book, Vronsky is a player who uses sexual passion to hide his unhappiness. For the movie, he needed to be portrayed as a man with sexual drive and somewhat unhappiness as well. The actor who plays Vronsky comes across as someone who is gentle and not overpoweringly masculine. I think that the actor did not do a great job to portray such an important character in the story. This results in an unrecognizable characterization of Vronsky.

The movie completely ignores the structure of the book. The movie relies on depicting Anna and Vronsky in hard situations. The result of this is a series of romanticized sex scenes. The characters come together due to passion, again, as portrayed in the book and not the movie. The relationship is not just about erotic relations. It is overfocused on this part of the relationship and weakens their character development. The movie would have been much better if it focused on the relationship and Anna’s sin. Cutting out these elements portrays the relationship as some kind of perfectly structured romance. I feel as if the only part of the book that is accurately portrayed is Levin’s relationship with Kitty.

Another issue with the movie is that it leaps from scene to scene way too often and does not explain major points well. Sometimes it jumps an absurd amount of time without explanation. If I did not know the story well, I would have found the jumping around confusing. As an example the audience isn’t shown Kitty’s decline or how her trip healed her. During the film, all that we are told is that she has changed her mind about Levin. We also are not shown that Vronsky has lost his friends and money because of Anna.

Overall, the film was much worse than the movie and does not capture the classic piece of literature that Anna Karenina is. The movie was poorly directed and leaves out a lot of major plot points that are significant to the story. The acting was about the only part of the movie that was done well. If I had to recommend the movie or the book I would absolutely recommend the book. The movie does not do the justice of Tolstoy’s work.