Some readers might have forgotten that, but "Masterpiece Theatre" has not. The redoubtable PBS program takes on " Anna Karenina" in a two-part, four-hour miniseries airing at 8pm Sunday and a week later on WTTW Channel 11. And as good as Helen McCrory is as an aging and anguished Anna, Scottish actor Douglas Henshall all but steals the show as Levin.
It can't be easy upstaging one of the most vivid and famous characters in literature, But Henshall pulls it off. Eyes wide with worry or blinking with wonder Henshall's Levin is an everyman, who projects nobility in weakness. and in seizing center stage from Anna, he doesn't betray the book but returns to its origins.
The current literary thinking is that Tolstoy set out to write a scathing condemnation of his title character, but in executing the book - in seeing her " all around" as Henry James used to put it , and making her story a tragedy rather than a moral fable - he found her more sympathetic. Still, there is little doubt where this most moral of all authors came down in the end.
The Hollywood approach - for instance, in the classic 30's version starring Greta Garbo - rejects that in favor of romanticizing Anna. This new British version returns to Tolstoy's original intent, without demonizing her.
The pouches under McCrory's eyes and her slightly sagging cheeks emphasize Anna's age. Likewise, Kevin McKidd's Count Vronsky, Anna's lover seems younger and even more vital and glowing than he is in the book. When they dance, director David Blair lets a viewer hear her breath, so that she seems to feel the exertion first and then the passion.
Yet this isn't tragedy reduced to mere mid-life crisis, Stephen Dillane , as Anna's husband, Karenin, might seem younger than he does in the book, but he's no less stiff and formal. Theirs is a loveless marriage and a viewer wants Anna out of it just as a reader wants her out of it just as Anna herself wants out of it. The essence of her tragedy is that there is no good path for her to take, and once her affair with Vronsky is begun it sets on a course as rigid and unalterable as the tracks of a train.
By contrast Levin, with his social tentativeness and abiding lack of faith in all things, steps through the story with deliberation, as if making each step of his own volition. Blair and screenwriter Alan Cubbit treat him almost tenderly, and they give Henshall ample room to flesh out the character. There are times when a viewer doesn't know whether to laugh at Levin's foibles or love him for them, and it's the perfect tone to take, because he really is the story's moral center.
As host Russell Baker points out at the beginning of Sunday's opening segment, the relationship between Levin and Kitty ( Paloma Baeza)- halting and considered whereas Anna' affair with Vronsky is rash and impassioned - is really the one Tolstoy intends as the depiction of ideal love. In fact the reconciliation between Levin and Kitty in a parlor word game at the end of Sunday's first segment is as emotionally powerful as anything that occurs between Anna and Vronsky.
The two-part miniseries also serves the rhythms of the Russian psychological novel, as it peaks in the middle with the end of Part 1 and then draws back in Part 2 before rushing on to the conclusion. The background music might be a little subdued - it strikes the note of British reserve that stamps this as a " Masterpiece Theatre" production - but otherwise Blair does a fine job of setting proper moods and atmosphere.
The omnious rail-yard scenes are all shot in smoke and high-contrast lighting, a visual look that resonates later on when Anna and Vronsky share a cigarette outdoors, with their breath steaming against a blue background.
The bright and glowing Italy scenes between anna and Vronsky create a sense of relief right where the story needs it, but as anna spirals downwards on her return to Russia, Blair returns to darkness and tilts the camera to suggest her increasing imbalance.
Isolated from society, Anna and Vronsky turn on each other, and from there it's only a matter of time before it's all over.
This production also manages to suggest the double standards between men and women and the overall social hypocrisy towards love affairs in czarist Russia. This made-for-TV version of the book doesn't achieve the psychological complexity of Tolstoy's novel - no movie version could - but it does stay true to the events in the text and, above all, to Tolstoy's intent.
And don't overlook small blessings. in light of the recent TV versions of " The American" and " The Great Gatsby" it's a welcome relief to find a made-for-TV adaptation that doesn't begin with the death at the end of the book and then treat the whole story as a flashback. A reader might know how things end up in " Anna Karenina", but the movie doesn't telegraph it any more than Tolstoy himself did.
Ted Cox ( Daily Herald Illinois- 16 th February 2001)