Anna Karenina (2012, Joe Wright)

Joe Wright's adaption of Tolstoy's enduring masterwork is a gliding, flamboyant, and overall shallow experience due to the director's placing of technical wizardry over building affinity with his characters. An unfortunate and frustrating recurring issue within the work of a clearly talented filmmaker that can be argued for this time round due to the trivial nature of the characters and desperate need to repackage a classic for modern digestion.

The tale of a socialite woman's decent into despair as she chooses a life of 'true love' to a young Count over her marriage to her statesman husband, is a timeless and still revelatory example of literature, much regarded as one of the greatest examples ever written. However, despite its profound lasting influence on not just literature but film and art in general, it would have been naive to play it straight when bringing Anna Karenina to the big screen. Audiences after all, especially those not familiar with Tolstoy's novel, may find the unfurling drama all too familiar as what makes the book so rich may seem conventional when translated to film. The approach taken turns the story into a kind of semi-stage play, an elaborate theatre house where the scenes psychically convert on screen before the viewers eyes as the characters roam and inhabit an enclosed performance space. Exterior shots are kept to a minimum with often peripheral details painted on the interior walls. The effect is often jarring, taking a short while to ease into though never stopping short of remarkable. This mode of storytelling makes for the most interesting component of Wright's film but also the source of its collapse in some respects.

Keira Knightly gives one of the strongest performances of her career as Karenina; as an actress she continues to climb great heights to lose her detractors, while she may have a lot more to prove, after her dazzling turn in A Dangerous Method and now this she is certainly developing as a performer and must be appreciated. Jude Law has similarly suffered from a hoard of critics throughout his career but likewise delivers a truly wonderful act as Karenina's good natured yet unloved husband Alexei. His character could so easily be construed as God fearing, a detached man devoid of emotion, obsessed with social standing. Given his screen-time and narrative function it's testament to Law's performance that he is felt to be so tragically human despite his seemingly idealist nature and rigid moral coding. His Alexei is full of compassion and love despite receiving none himself, ending up the most memorable and sympathetic character of this film's mighty ensemble. Aaron Johnson as Count Vronsky, the man who passionately falls for Anna and vice-versa, doesn't do much more than create a young ambitious militant man with shallow aspirations, but that was his function. The story, after all, is of a woman's search for contentment and truth in a society lost in fabrication and compromise; the technical inventiveness surrounding the characters, the exuberance of the living set piece they inhabit, portrays the superficial elegance of the city's high life. While juxtaposed against the story of Konstantin, close friend of Karenina's brother Oblonsky, and his quest to marry Kitty, Oblonsky's wife's younger sister,  a woman he truly loves, does the film refine itself. Refining itself to show the purity of Konstantin's rural life and sincerity of love compared to the damaging social mores of the city; a great theme in Tolstoy's work that is conveyed rather well here. In fact it's in these moments with Konstantin where the film works best, as we're ceased to be bombarded by the film's roller coaster effect and given the chance to invest rather than being forcibly removed from feeling. 

Martin Scorsese one said of his similarly themed The Age Of Innocence, that it was his most violent film, quite the opinion from 'the master of the mob movie'. Yet Scorsese's feelings towards his film rings true and here Joe Wright also does an excellent job of creating the social scrutiny felt by Anna Karenina after her affairs have been aired. The maliciousness of society is unleashed upon Tolstoy's 'Scarlet Woman' shown in the film through striking utility; during a horse race in which Anna unconsciously reveals her feelings towards Count Vronsky and at a restaurant where all eyes scrutinise her every move, Anna's shame is expressed with a Brechtian use of Tableaux Vivant as the room freezes and fixates on her. 

Adapting a novel of this magnitude was never going to be an easy task and to a degree Wright has pulled it off. Whether his clear technical adeptness as a director and his refusal to let us get too close to his characters is needed this time round is debatable, as this approach to his work has stifled past efforts. Atonement was more about the bigger picture of human lives than the personal intricacies of relationships, as was the case with Hanna. In the former, the example of how simple misunderstandings and the troublesome subjective viewpoint of personal experience can ruin lives was put forth. With Hanna the inevitable fears of parenthood and destruction of innocence in the world were played out at the expense of emotional investment. Perhaps this wouldn't be such sore spot if Wright's films weren't such platforms to show off his technical virtuosity as a filmmaker, because it only highlights his shortcomings as a storyteller. Whether his pitfalls actually help his Anna Karenina this time round, I'm not sure, but it certainly isn't the failure others have reported it to be. Is Anna Karenina a great film? Not by a long way. Is Joe Wright capable of making a great film? Yes, he just hasn't managed it yet but I know he's got it in him.

Hanna (2011, Joe Wright)

The titular character played by Saoirse Ronan is introduced as a hunter, a killer, a girl possessing strength and intricate skill beyond her 16years. Her father Erik (Eric Bana) is the cause for these impressive survival skills; he has trained her to deal with any situation, to fight or think her way out of any corner she may find herself in. The father and daughter live alone in snow-capped rural Finland, seemingly hundreds of miles away from civilisation in every direction. They hunt, cook, learn, and fight together in and around their wooden lodge. One day Erik presents Hanna with a red button, he reminds her that when she's ready, when she thinks she's prepared,  that she may press the button. He also reminds her that when this occurs there is no going back. This already abstract and disorientating introduction is further heightened when Erik informs Hanna that when said button is activated, a woman (unknown to us at this point) will not stop until she is dead. Of course it's not too long before this mysterious button is pressed and all hell breaks loose. For the sake of the film's content, spoilers will be kept to an absolute minimum as its unfolding mystery is the fuel that just keeps Hanna going.

Hanna and Erik go their separate ways and are hunted down for unknown reasons by villainous CIA task master Cate Blanchett. As Hanna is reprimanded and escapes, keeping only just ahead of her pursuers, we witness the world through her eyes for the first time as she finds things that we take for granted (such as a kettle or television) as threatening. She ends up being under the wing of a British liberalist family traveling through Morocco, she befriends the group's shallow teenage daughter who teaches Hanna about boys and makeup and all the things that Erik filtered out on behalf of her survival, while the parents (played by Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng) preach about how children need freedom of expression. It's in this meeting that the film's voice starts to be heard, though it's soon muted through the offensive under-use of both Williams and Flemyng. 


As the film develops it gradually becomes more and more surrealistic and ends up mirroring a Grimm fairy tale, the film has many references to the Grimm Brother's work throughout - most strikingly Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White. As the hunters tracking both Hanna and Erik gradually move closer, dormant secrets are gradually unearthed revealing a dark past kept hidden and the reasons behind Hanna's strange existence.


Hanna marks a turning point for director Joe Wright, who has given us luscious period dramas Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Atonement (2007) in the past. Here he takes on the action genre for the first time, and while it must be applauded on some level for Wright trying new things, it's painfully obvious how his sensibilities and strengths as a director simply don't mesh with the material. Hanna is a film that demands a consistent pace, an intense feeling of forward motion, but only when the film slows down does it ever feel comfortable. When a fast edited fight or chase sequence occurs it feels awkward and strangely at odds with itself, even the mightily impressive score by The Chemical Brothers feels out of place and jarring when it hits loud and fast to accompanying such scenes. When, however, the film slows down, we see the film's most impactive moments. Wright has become famous for his complicated long takes, at the film's centre is a set piece which is just as (if not more so) impressive as the infamous bathhouse fight in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007). We follow Erik as he exits a bus, walks across a street, and enters an underground tube station before being attacked from all sides, all in a single breathless take. The choreography is masterful in every regard and further reminds why Wright gets such praise as a technical craftsman.

The film's pathos is an interesting one as it examines parent-child relationships. Though Hanna far from represents the average teenage girl, the film expresses a fear from both child and parent perspectives about facing the world. To the young, the world is a vast mystery that must be explored and tested no matter what the danger to define oneself. From the older perspective, the parent has seen the horrors of the world and has perhaps been worn down through them, they must protect and prepare their child for life, but can a parent ever truly prepare? After all, we need space to grow, we must face trials and fail in order to evolve. As father Erik says to his daughter, "I tried to prepare you", "you didn't prepare me for this", she replies.


Unfortunately this pathos is more interesting than the film's attempt at exploring it. Even though Hanna has ambitions and rises far above average mainstream fare, it fails to reach the heights of these ambitions. It's an exciting enough experience as the offbeat, oddball nature gives it a directionless quality that retains interest and suspense. In the end however, when the final line is uttered, in retrospect Hanna ends up being entirely directionless as a result of this and not nearly as interesting as it could have been.

Hanna delivers some fantastic images, some masterful segments, and an interesting meditation on parenting, but the sum of its parts don't amount to much in the end. Hanna should be the kind of big budget Hollywood thriller that we all want; a film that delivers thrills, action and suspense, along with rounded characters, humour, and heightened ideas to boot. With a cast this good and a concept this enticing it's sad to say that Hanna is neither a profound movie of ideas or a slick action thriller, while desperately trying to be both.