Director Karen Shakhnazarov has put on screen Tolstoy's Anna Karenina = AK as a TV miniseries in eight episodes (2017) and one may assume that this movie, also released in 2017 has been culled from the series. It does not present Tolstoy's work in its entirety (which would have been difficult anyway). It excludes some key characters (e. G. Kitty and Levin) and gives little play to others such as Dolly and her husband Oblonsky, Anna's brother.
The key to the movie is, the tale is being told by Vronsky, Anna's lover twenty years after the facts. To give him the opportunity to speak up, the script adds an initial sequence where Vronsky is a staff officer in he Tsar's army facing the Japanese in Manchuria in 1904. He has been wounded and is being attended to by Sergey Karenin, Anna's son, now a military doctor. Sergey knew the outlines of the affair between his mother and Vronsky but only through the vengeful filter of his father. The middle aged Vronsky seems to have matured; he befriends and probably saves a shell shocked orphaned Chinese girl but some of his early flaws remain; he is wounded in a meaningless daredevil exploit (or, perhaps, he is courting death).
The new point of view changes the tale. In AK Vronsky came out as somewhat of a cad and we were not privy to his thoughts; here Vronsky remembers himself as thoughtful, loving and patient with Anna, and is haunted by her memory, On the other hand, Anna's husband and even Anna herself are seen in a less favorable light.than in AK. Characters are missing or minimized because, although important for Anna they were not of particular concern to Vronsky.
I found this experiment in reinterpretation of a classic fascinating. Direction is fluid and dynamic, acting and cinematography outstanding and the reconstruction of time and place perfect. A quality movie.
