Read the novel. Nothing can ever top it.
Cannot wait!!!
Thanks for posting :)
Loved the book. Can’t say I thought much of the Henry Fonda movie. And I’ve seen a mixed bag of “Anna Karenina” attempts. So this one could go either way.
I liked Outlander!
Some years ago I bought and read Anna Karenina for the 1st time after watching the 1997 film version and then the 1948 film version starring Vivian Leigh - forgo the most recent film version - dreadfull! I haven't gotten around to War & Peace - not yet.
I know it is one of those must reads so perhaps this winter, to read on cold dreary days and with many cups of hot English tea and a cozy blanket, I will pick it up War And Peace from the library or better yet go to my local bookstore and buy it - it seems like forever the last time I bought a big heavy serious book, but oh how I love holding one in my hands knowing it is mine forever and turning the pages at my leisure and then putting it on my ever expanding bookshelf but looking at its binding as I would a picture of a dear old friend who I can revisit any time I want.
I found the pace of the novel Anna Karenina was very slow and very detailed, richly so, beautifully written, but also very heavy - at times overly wordy, a bit of a burden to read and maintain interest in at times - sort of as the cliché goes - "it was like reading War and Peace" - LOL!.
Much of the dialogue in Anna Karenina from what I recall was the internal unspoken dialogue -the inner most thoughts of the characters but those also being key to understanding their motivations and subsequent actions for better or worse.
Especially that of Konstantin Levin who seems to always be lamenting and alternatingly embracing and often questioning the meaning of his life in a rapidly changing world and his place in it; making him in my opinion the most sympathetic characters in the novel and a moral counter point to Anna and Vronkski's passion and the coldness of Karenina, but also at the same time the most frustrating and difficult to understand character in the novel. Reading Levin's inter dialogue with himself, at times I just wanted to say to him - "man up and get on with it, you are making things way to complicated" : ),
I think that this type of novel - Anna Karenina and I would guess also War And Peace; because the narration and the internal and unspoken dialogue is so important to the story, it does not readily make for good film adaptations. Some novels just do not easily lend themselves to film. And when a film maker only uses spoken dialogue and action sequences, no matter how well done or lavishly filmed, the elaborate costuming or epic scenes to tell the story and or then tries to fill in the narrative or the character's internal thoughts with dialogue or action not in the novel or with wholly invented scenes or other film tricks, much is often lost as to the novel's underlying truth and meaning and message.
One of the few exceptions to that rule at least in my opinion was the Martin Scorsese film adaptation of Edith Wharton's Age Of Innocence - one of my favorite novels and IMO one of the best film adaptations that effectively used a voice over to narrate the unspoken dialogue, by the late Joanne Woodward, along with great acting and beautiful cinematography. It never felt contrived or forced or intrusive on the dialogue - beautifully done.