In earlier decades the blonde bombshells in movies were women. In this year's edition of the Toronto Film Festival at least two of the more visible ones are men. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a golden-maned blue-eyed vision as Count Vronsky in Joe Wright's adaptation of "Anna Karenina." While Ryan Gosling's peroxoide job adds allure to his turn as a badboy stunt motorcyclist in Derek Cianfrance's "The Place Beyind the Pines."
Following on the heels of Cianfrance's glowingly received "Blue Valentine" -- also starring Gosling -- "Pines" has been one of the fest's most anticipated titles (and was just picked up by FocusFeatures after reported interest from TWC). Clocking in at well over two hours and pursuing at least three separate plot strands, the film initially struck me as overlong and uncentered. Could have been that the morning of the screening it was pouring rain and the escalator at the Scotia Bank Theater (rising to daunting heights) was out of order. On reflection, I've found the film more to my liking.
Gosling reprises his portrayal of a cash-poor, marginalized dude who not only can't find, but wouldn't know how to look for the path up. In our current under-employed land Cianfrance has hit on a kind of loser/loner emblematic of the times. And since he's played by ultra-charismatic Gosling we root for him even as he makes disastrous choices.
The film's riveting first scene ogles Gosling's naked, tattooed midriff -- openly fetishizing the star's famously ripped body -- as he's about to perform a death-defying motorcycle stunt at a fair. Some past baggage surfaces in the form of Eva Mendes as a girlfriend he more or less abandoned in his wanderings. "Who's that guy?" he says of the baby in her arms.
Gosling wants back as a father and husband -- even though Mendes has made a home with a different man. Convinced he can win her over with money, he takes to robbing local upstate banks with an accomplice, using his motorcycle skills to pull off the heists. Gosling ends up on the wrong end of the gun of a rookie cop (Bradley Cooper) and -- whammo, the story then sprints off on another track to tell the story of the cop -- who also has a baby son -- and who crusades against the police corruption in his own backyward. Finally, the story jumps 15 years forward to wrap up the fate of the two now teenage boys.
Cianfrance is juggling many themes here, chief among them retribution for past acts that ripple outward and poison future generations. There's a sort of mythic feel to how Gosling's son feels impelled to honor his father. Like few other American filmmakers, Cianfrance conveys empathy for folks on the lower economic rung who are struggling, even if misguidedly, to find their footing.
The beauty of Toronto's sprawling sprocket opera is that you can turn on a dime and find yourself in a totally different universe -- that of "Anna Karenina" and the toniest circles of Imperial Russia in 1874. Tolstoy's novel famously portrays the epic love story of Anna, an elegant beauty married to a government official, and
dashing cavalry officer Count Vronsky. It's a work of
penetrating psychological insight with characters so true-feeling you could reach out
and touch them.
Yet Wright has daringly given Tolstoy's masterpiece of realism a heavily
stylized re-do by camping it in a vast decaying theater. Periodically
the action jumps the artificial theater space to embrace the natural
world beyond.
The film opens with the babble of an orchestra tuning up, as various
players of the story enact
disjointed scenes from their daily routines -- often in balletic fashion -- on a stage fronted by
footlights. The synchronized movements of a herd of government
bureaucrats (the world of Anna's husband Karenin, played by Jude Law)
are as stylized as the performance art of Pina Bausch.
We're given fair warning: this is no conventional costumer/period
piece. You either buy into it right away. Or say, What the... ? Or get
seduced into Wright's daring vision, a bit the way virtuous Anna (Keira
Knightley) gets worn down by Count Vronsky.
True to the novel, the fevered theatricalized world of Anna and Vronsky
is interwoven with the narrative of Kitty and Levin, an idealistic
landowner attached to the soil, whose belief in lifelong marital
commitment acts as a foil to Vronsky and his roistering cavalry officer
comrades; and as a counter-view to the
ill-fated Anna and Vronsky, who are ostracized by a hypocritical
society for flouting the rules.
What overrides the formal challenges Wright throws at the viewer is the visual splendor of the film's many set pieces -- like the
ball where Vronsky (in white) and Anna (in black lace) unite as lovers
in a rapturous waltz that makes entirely explicit the erotic content of
the male/female pas de deux in ballet. Knightley has said that a later
sex scene shot in closeup was quite literally a choreographed dance, which would be
evident in a wide shot. With its ravishing visuals, "Anna" is seldom less than enthralling.
Wright, with his background in the visual arts, has clearly looked at a
lot of theater, dance, and art to create this adaptation. Count among
his influences "The Red Shoes," Lars Von Trier, Robert Wilson, Brecht, along with ballet
and avant garde dance. His stagey take on Tolstoy's epic novel is hardly a gratuitous choice; rather, it brilliantly captures Russian society of the period, which
sought to imitate and act out French styles.
A couple of cavils concerning casting. Jude Law is pitch-perfect as
poor cuckolded Karenin. In some ways Knightley -- who's become Wright's
muse -- seems born to play Anna. Yet her 21st century girlish slimness
runs counter to the more Rubenesque ideal of feminine beauty in
Tolstoy's day. Domhnall Gleeson's Levin comes off too buffoonish, while
Alicia Vikander's Kitty invites wonder at what he sees in her -- the
pair don't do justice to one of literature's great love affairs.
As Vronsky, Aaron Taylor-Johnson moves with virile assurance; this is a star-making turn. Also, for the gawkers among us,
the actor (22) has added the name Taylor to reflect his union with
director/artist Sam Taylor-Wood (45) with whom he has two daughters.
Now there's a movie in itself.
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