Side Effects

This was written at the time of the film's release...

First, Do No Harm
or
Physician, Heal Thyself

One of my great joys in life is watching happy-pharm' commercials that spend ten of their thirty seconds extolling the virtues of their chemicals ("It stops your brain from telling you you're SAD!"), then the last 20 of them warning about all the dire side effects of said chemicals up to and including death (and maybe beyond).  That's comedy gold right there, masquerading as serious medical advice, wrapped in ad hucksterism.*

Now, prolific director Steve Soderbergh, who started his career twenty four years ago with Sex, Lies, and Videotape is saying he will end his commercial film career** with Side Effects, an odd mixing of genres that has as its basis all those little warnings for the mystery "miracle" pills that are being foisted on the public for the slightest of symptoms and moods, with the tentative approval of the FDA, and a library of law-suits, concerning their consequences on real human beings. In that way, it plays on a public's paranoia and trust of just what kind of human experiments might be being financed by the drug cartels, in much the same way as Hitchcock messed with our minds with our basic fears in his long career.  Soderbergh has never been this direct in his work before, making something akin to a traditional suspense-thriller, instead of a character study with sociological underpinnings (The Informant!,  Contagion, S, L, and V, Traffic) as we're used to from his previous work.

It's a pretty basic story, with some nicely diverting echoes of recent headlines: Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) works for a New York marketing agency and is dealing with a lot of stress in her life. Her husband (Channing Tatum) is being released from prison after four years for insider trading.  She's been struggling with these issues for awhile, and being treated for depression over the circumstances. But, once husband comes home, things take a turn for the worst.  

Or actually, don't take a turn—Emily drives her late-model car directly into a garage wall—rather than heading for the "Exit" arrow, she runs INTO the "Exit" arrow. 

She suffers a concussion and is taken to the hospital, where she comes under the watchful eye of Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) who knows exactly what's wrong by deducing "usually when someone hits a brick wall, there are skid marks." Emily doesn't want to be a bother, and bargains her way out of the E.R. by promising to visit Dr. Banks for therapy.

At this point, a responsible reviewer should say: "Warning: complications may occur, consult your physician." Let's just say "things get messy" and merely suggest that a nasty case of medical ethics can turn into...a really nasty case of all kinds of ethics. To say any more would spoil the bumpy ride the film provides, but one doesn't risk too much by sharing a particularly nifty exchange around which the whole film hinges: "Did the person do it? Are they guilty?" "In the present case, those are two very different things." Nice little piece of writing, that.

The screenwriter is Scott Z. Burns (who also wrote Contagion and The Informant!) and he's constructed a medical thriller that takes a few hairpin turns and manages to avoid the guardrails of audience expectations and movie cliches. And Soderbergh (who shot and edited the film) has cast it impeccably with folks he's worked with before: Law, who's usually fared better at smaller character parts, here finally shows he can carry off a "leading man" role, dominating the film, while making "normal" interesting; Catherine Zeta-Jones shows (again) how versatile she can be in a small but crucial role as a consulting shrink; Channing Tatum makes the most of his part as the husband caught up in a world that he's just re-entered but can't understand. And Soderbergh rookie Rooney Mara gives a complex performance that's more than a little unpredictable (not surprising, given her history of moving from a straight performance in The Social Network to anything-but in Fincher's version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) looking like what you'd imagine Sandra Bullock's creepy little sister might look like, Mara convincingly pulls off mood shifts that might require an exorcist rather than a prescription.

Sorry...sorry. I shouldn't have used the word "creepy!"

In many ways, Side Effects is the film many expected last year's Flight to be: instead of a straight-forward look at addictions and their crises, a lot of viewers were expecting there to be some mystery that would neatly tie loose ends and vindicate its protagonist.  But, Side Effects plays with societal responsibility and legalities in a time when the very nature of people's natures is being altered, in the same way that Michael Crichton used to explore science's impacts on us in his books and films, provoking such tough questions and "Are we prepared for this?" "Just because we can do this, should we, and how will we deal with the fall-out?"

In any case, in the theater or after-movie discussions, Side Effects will not cause drowsiness.

Jude Law learns his practice isn't perfect in Side Effects

* SNL did a fine parody of this type of advertising with a fictional toy-product, the generically-labelled "Happy Fun Ball:"

**  We'll see how long that lasts, but Soderbergh has long grated against turning out commercial product (the one-two punch last year of Haywire and Magic Mike, notwithstanding) for the sake of commercial product, wanting to experiment with non-box-officey topics and distribution avenues. 

2024 Update: Yeah, he shows no signs of stopping—Presence is coming out this year and after that, a project called Blackbag.

Repo Men

Written at the time of the film's release...

"I Sold My Soul to the Company Store"

Who is Miguel Sapochnik and why haven't I heard of him before?*

The reason is simple—he's been attached to a lot of projects that fell by the way-side for one reason or another, not the least of which is probably studio cold-feet at risking a lot of dollars on a director whose only previous credit has been a 15 minute short ("The Dreamer," 2000).

The release of Repo Men will, hopefully, change that. Sapochnik's sci-fi noir (based on the novel "The Repossession Mambo" by Eric Garcia, who co-wrote the screenplay with Garrett Lerner) posits a future corporatocracy (the credited "futurist" is Ben Bova) in which everything is for sale. You think unrestrained capitalism in health-care is bad now, you just wait. The scenario here is that rather than having diseased patients waiting for organ donors to supply replacement parts, manufactured items are used instead, manufactured by several bio-mechanics corporations.

A franchise called "The Union" arranges the transplants and supplies the tickers and goo-gah's to be implanted, at a cost that is extremely prohibitive. But, that's okay, there's an easy payment plan to fit any budget (the APR is 19.6%, which elicited knowing whistles in the audience). But you'd better read the fine print. After 90 days your account goes into arrears, and The Union has the right to repossess your equipment. They hunt you down, taser you (at which point they read to you that you have a right to an ambulance or any emergency medical care if you can afford it, not that it'll do you any good while stunned) and then proceed to saw, scissor, scalpel their equipment out of you (and maybe it's just me, but I find this scenario very plausible).

The best repo-man The Union has is Remy Stark (Jude Law, he's terrific in this, for once bringing a strong presence to a starring role), partnered odd-couple style with Jake (Forest Whitaker, clearly having fun), but Remy is getting pressure from home to get out of the repo biz and into sales, which has more regular hours and solves that nasty blood-stain problem with the laundry. The decision is made for him on one job recalling a heart, when his portable defibrillator used to stop the victim's heart back-fires and ends up stopping his.

In one of those ironies that they teach in Screenwriting 101, Remy winds up in the hospital possessed of his own ticking time-bomb in his chest, and, having a literal change-of-heart, suffers sympathetic pains with his victims and can no longer...operate. Complications pile up: his wife, because he's now stuck in the repo job kicks him out, his weakened condition makes work harder even if he can get the gumption to start cutting, and he soon runs out of money and, yes, time.

As if there would be any doubt.

Repo Men is Logan's Run cross-stitched with Coma, and the Urban Legend of the guy in the bath-tub of ice, but it's in the telling of the tale that the movie sails through the material like a hot knife through butter. Sarcastic, caustic and beating to an eclectically quirky soundtrack (everything from Rosemary Clooney with Perez Prado to Mama Cass), the movie is rude, ironic and fiendishly funny, almost gleefully detailing the trap that Stark puts himself into, and not conceding to the squeamish in the cracking of chests, the popping of knees and the squirting of arteries (there's a protracted operation that plays almost like a love scene late in the film that had people fidgeting and crossing their legs throughout the theater). The action scenes become a bit unbelievable as the movie goes on, and steadily more blood-thirsty. Plus a third-act change of tone—the humor drops about 40% 'round about the time the fights start—hampers some of the nasty enjoyment of the thing. But Sapochnik (who started out in the art department) makes the movie go a long way on a limited budget, and his odd future hybrid—there are blimps, light-rail and overhead lines in the same shot—keeps things down to Earth. >Whitaker and Law are helped by a wonderful dead-pan performance by Liev Schreiber, and Alice Braga's third sci-fi damsel role in as many years (after I Am Legend and Blindness).

Definitely not for the squeamish, but Repo Men is a promising feature debut for the director. The only reason it doesn't get a total rave is because of the derivative climax. It'd be nice if a science fiction movie ended with something other than a fight every once in a great while.

* 2023 Update:  Repo Men did not do well at the box-office, and there are no future features listed for him. But, don't weep tears for him, as he's been directing a lot of TV—little things like "Under the Dome," "True Detective" and a little something called "Game of Thrones" and its prequel series "House of the Dragon."

The rather witty poster campaign for Repo Men (before the tamer one with the stars appeared).

All the King's Men (2006)

Written at the time of the film's release. Recent events have compelled an update.

All The King's Men (Steven Zaillian, 2006) The story goes that Robert Rossen, the director of the 1949 version of All the King's Men was not happy with his film. Too long, too talky, and too boring, Rossen was unsure of what to cut to get it down to length. A plan was drawn up: he told his editor to take 30 seconds from the beginnings of scenes and 30 seconds from the end. What was left came in under two hours of running time and moved at a jarring pace, but it won Oscars for its star Broderick Crawford, Best Supporting Actress Mercedes McCambridge...and as Best Picture.

All the King's Men was already a great film, but there were too many compromises to the Hays Code to get it to the screen. Steve Zaillian (a fine screenwriter, who directed a favorite film of mine Searching for Bobby Fischer) decided to make a new film of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize winning book, and sadly, wasted the opportunity in a film convinced of its own importance.*

From the crack of thunder that appears before the opening credits, to the thudding James Horner score that telegraphs (with hammers) each imminent plot-point (Horner uses one dirge-like theme which, by its third appearance, I had assigned lyrics "This-is-a-sad-sto-ry/A-bout Lou-i-si-an-na"), to the subdued lighting and the art design in shades of "Godfather" mordant, everything about this movie promises great portent, but merely meanders through its story of how nothing born of corruption can come to any good, be it man, ideals or building materials.

It's a frustrating film to sit through, because the pieces are there given a less respectful (as in funeral-respect) presentation. The cast is impressive. Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Hopkins play the well-to-do Stanton clan. Kathy Baker and Jude Law are the blighted Burden clan, and Sean Penn, looking more and more like a young George C. Scott, plays the fictional surrogate of Huey Long, Willie Stark. As his flaks and flunkies, James Gandolfini, Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley.

Good cast. But there are problems. Penn, as he is wont to do, goes over-the-top in his speechifying, his arms waiving wildly in the air, his fingers doing filigreed dances. Where Penn got the inspiration to play it this way is a mystery, as footage of Long in speech-mode (below) shows him much more in control. Not even Adolph Hitler emotes this much. Jude Law, never the strongest of actors, falls into the dreariness of the film, staring at the other actors or nothing-in-particular with sad doe-like eyes.** One suspects editing problems with this film—Zaillian did spend an inordinate amount of time in post-production on it. Subjects are brought up and dropped, like Stark's football-playing son, who figures prominently in the '48 film, is mentioned here and then never heard from again.*** We never do find out how Burden's mother acquires facts to make an accusation against him. Mark Ruffalo's character is left as a dissatisfying enigma.

What we do get is ponderous, and pretentious. Zaillian spends a lot of screen-time trying to show (visually) that the only thing that could unite the "hicks" and gentry of Louisiana is death. Again, that same lesson has been told in better films.

2023 Update: At the time the film came out, there was speculation that it was a "dig" at then-President George W. Bush. If so, it was bound to disappoint both sides, no matter where you came down on that particular president.

But, a re-watch today would make folks blanch—"well, that-tha-that's Donald Trump!"

Nope. Trump just borrowed from the same play-book that politicians have been using since politics became the world's "second oldest profession:" "Get elected by any means necessary. Cease power. Never let it go." That's the genius of Robert Penn Warren's book; he found inherent truths in the process and they continue no matter what generation after reads it. Sure, it seems like Trump—except for the details, the milieu, the accent. But, the autocracy is there. The crowd-whipping. The scandals. Warren could be accused of writing cliches. But, cliches are there because they're unerringly true and happen enough to become cliches.

For the truth is, politicians lie. And people look for a Messiah and want to be lied to. They eat it up. And the ultimate cliche. Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.

Just because it's a cliche doesn't make it not true.

* Given the awards-history of the cast and screenwriter it was assumed that this version of All The King's Men would be a top contender come Oscar-season, but its poor box-office reception scuttled those hopes.

** K (who likes Law) kept yelling out "accent-drop!" whenever his "Lawsiana" draw-el moved to Market Street. Anthony Hopkins, the sly old dog, doesn't even try.

*** Sadly, Zaillian, in an attempt to simplify his film, gutted some crucial scenes from it including the sub-plot about Stark's son, and an extended ending that provides the best scenes for Jude Law and Jackie Earle Haley.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Written at the time of the film's release...

 

And...at the time Avatar had come out and marching towards becoming the "#1 Box Office Champion of All Time." I was underwhelmed by it—there's a link to my review buried down there if you even care. On the other hand, nobody was going to see this film, which, as you can tell if you read it, I found a shame. One can advocate, but people are going to see what they want—it's their money, after all—and it's all a part of the free market (or as some would label it, "cancel culture"—the Supreme Court seems to think what you do with your money is free speech, even if you're paying for it). But, just as I quixotically advocated for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, I would also urge people to see the wonderful Everything Everywhere All at Once, which, in a multi-plex of less imaginative offerings has far more bright ideas and film-making brio than the rest of the offerings in said multi-plex combined.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, This World is Full of Wonderment for Those with Eyes to See it."  

 

One must consider the momentum of publicity when one talks about James Cameron's Avatar. The tsunami of NewsCorps force-fed publicity and societal group-think has done its job on the populace and the majority are of one mind. At this point, I've heard too many smart people saying that nobody will ever make movies the same way again, that it's ground-breaking, and (okay) the story isn't much, but the visuals are so spectacular it compensates for the stunning more-of-the-sameness of the blah-blah-blah.

 

You don't know what you're missing. There is more imagination, thought and, gosh, genuine wit going on in the "mirror" sequences of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus than in anything in Avatar. Hell, even the non-CGI "live" sequences are amazing to look at.

But...nobody's lining up to see Imaginarium. And that's a shame. For, if you want a fantasy film brimming with ideas, some of them quite provocative, it is this one, directed by that most snake-bit of directors, Terry Gilliam. It has been abundantly documented ad nauseum the tragic story of this film: how star Heath Ledger died in the middle of filming, and how a corps of Ledger-Gilliam supporters—Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell—stepped up to play the visages of Ledger in the "Imaginarium" sequences (actually it seems perfectly natural the way Gilliam does it), but what isn't reported is that Gilliam was hit by a bus and broke his back during the filming.* Despite these alarming developments that would halt anyone other than a crazy "Monty Python" alum, the film is rich in detail, bursting with context, and doesn't have that "scrimping" footage-stretching feel that so many films-in-trouble give off.

It's basically a fairy-story set in our world (or a delirium dream, not sure) where Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is an immortal, who, with his rag-tag theater troupe—assistant Percey (Verne Troyer), barker Anton (Andrew Garfield) and daughter Valentina (model Lily Cole, whose alarming face is that of an alabaster porcelain doll)—travels in an out-sized Bergman-crossed-with-Joad horse-drawn wagon/convertible stage, enticing marks to enter his "Imaginarium," a mirror that sucks the hapless into Parnassus' bizarre mind-scapes, where they either live...or die. Parnassus, you see, has made a deal with the Devil. Inhabiting the old man's mind, as he does most of ours, is Mr. Nick (Tom Waits...of course), who has his own lures to the impure of heart. Enter one of Nick's speak-easy's or one-night-stand motels that stick out like sore toad-stools in the landscape and BOOM! the Devil takes your soul. And the bottom line of the Devil's deal is a certain number of souls before Valentina's sweet 16th birthday ("The age of consent" she trills) or her day of freedom becomes her day of imprisonment, as the Devil claims her for her own. A situation as Grimm...and familiar...as can be.

But Gilliam's Devil is in the details. The little band are aided in their quest by an amnesiac named Tony (Heath Ledger) whom they save and who, in turn, tries to save them, but whose past comes back to haunt and threaten them. Ledger is at his quick-silver best here, his accent wavering through several dialects, his eyes darting (all qualities picked up by his capable alter-ego's), for Tony is a chameleon, a huckster, the trickster of Myth—which Gilliam uses to savage satiric effect—and is a devil of his own, capable of destroying what he seeks to save. The battle between Good and Evil, Duty and Temptation turns complicated, and Parnassus must bargain again, at great sacrifice, to save that which he loves most, whether it's wished for or no.

The Devil's in the details for the look of the film, too. The "real-world" that the "Imaginarium" wagon trundles through is our world, but it's a world of extremes: back-alley garbage-lands with trash-fires that litter the scene (where the rag-tag group seems to fit most) and vast temples of commerce-malls, where Tony, with a marketer's zeal attempts to bring new customers. Each of these victims have their own "Imaginarium" realms: a wealthy dowager emerges into a vision of giant fashion-shoes, another a 2-D pop-up book forest. At one point, a falling "Imaginarium" customer takes an incredible fall, and Gilliam cuts to an improbable "Python" joke—a giant thumb-tack—sitting in the middle of nothingness (Gilliam mercifully, for the moment, has the hapless mark miss the point). And even outside the mirror, there are wonders of movie-making brio. In a scene where Percey walks away from Parnassus with his usual bluster, Gilliam shoots the diminutive Troyer at a heroic looking-up angle—the camera had to be scraping the street.

Now, a confession. It may sound like I'm gushing about Gilliam here, but I've always had a problem with his films: I fall asleep through them. It's not that I'm bored, but there's something about the richness of detail, the constant flow of new things to look at, and the murky lighting that induces narcolepsy in me. Before seeing a Gilliam film, I try to load up on coffee and sugar to get through it. I have no idea why this occurs (maybe it's Rapid Eye Movement caused from the orbs darting about the screen), but it is inevitable—it occurred here through the Jude Law sequences—but I managed to keep my eyes open throughout the whole thing this time.

If the film is flawed, it is that it tries to do too much. Even with a simple story, derived from old fairy-tale tropes, Gilliam again attempts to fit 10 pounds of story into a 5 pound film. Complications begin to pile up, revelations are delayed, little troubling details are revealed—there's a convenient pitch-pipe here—and everything becomes resolved in an ambiguous and hasty manner. Like most Gilliam films, a second viewing may make murky matters clearer. 

Plus, the overall story has a premise open to interpretation...is it a "God versus Devil" story, or merely a fairy tale? The Christian Science Monitor's Peter Rainer thinks it may even be autobiographical with Parnassus a mask for Gilliam, "a mad dreamer forever riven between his imagination and the necessity to sell it."** And like his "Python" fraternity, there's a streak of dark running through this, as with all Gilliam films (remember how Kevin's parents are killed at the end of Time Bandits?), that may be off-putting for some viewers. Fans of Gilliam's films should expect it, but those who prefer their fantasy milkier may not like the taste of the dark stuff. Avatar is far less subtle, more a punch "on the nose," and although dark, gives the impression of a happy-ish ending.

So, it is doubly appropriate that Imaginarium brings me back to Avatar. For what is Gilliam's film but a re-working of the caution "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time," and that includes the Devil, but the Devil gets his own.

What's Gilliam's next movie? Well, he's determined to go back and film his Don Quixote movie, come hell or high water.*** It is only appropriate for this most quixotic of film-makers, forever charging against the impossible odds at realizing the incredible visions wind-milling in his head.

* Here, the endlessly inventive Gilliam made lemonade—convincing the bus company to provide transport rather than face a law-suit, thus saving lots of production money. And, if all of this wasn't enough, producer William Vince died right after filming. The film is dedicated to Ledger and Vince, and credited as "A Film by Heath Ledger & Friends." 

 

** Nice observation, that. But Rainer also thinks Ledger looks "dispirited" in the film--well, yeah, the character's just gone through a painful transition, but Ledger's performance of it is never less than audacious and energetic. I'm guilty of it, too, but critics shouldn't try to read actor's minds--they're chameleons, after all, when they're doing it right, and we should speculate cautiously when ascribing motivations to surface appearances on film.

 

*** He did. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was released in 2018.

Anna Karenina (2012)

Struggling with writing a review of Cyrano, the latest from director Joe Wright. So, in the meantime, here are a couple reviews from his past work that I haven't put up yet.

Written at the time of the film's release...

 

Artificial Intelligence
or
Anna! Karenina! The! Musical!

Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is considered by many the greatest novel ever written, and has been adapted so many times (two of them starring Greta Garbo!), one is tempted to name any version "The Last Remake of Anna Karenina." So, the task for director Joe Wright and scripter Tom Stoppard must have seemed daunting, or as one of Zsa Zsa Gabor's later husbands stated it: "You know what you have to do, you just have to find a way of making it interesting."

Well, this one is interesting, alright. And it hues closely to Tolstoy's novel in the way that a CliffsNotes Edition sticks close. All the plot points are there, the characters whittled down to their bare essences, or eliminated altogether, and breezily delivered in a theatrical manner, save some significant exceptions. Truth is, Wright makes this version of Anna Karenina the way Baz Luhrmann would, as a grand, operatic experience staged in an extraordinarily choreographed with the emphasis on the "arch" (as in "playfully and affectedly roguish") in Proscenium Arch.

Jim Emerson had a fascinating article* (based around Skyfall) on his "Scanners" blog on the difference between a "theatrical" film and a theatrical film and its use of space as defined by the limitations of the frame and a stage directors' tendency to reflect that frame with its own limitations resembling the dimensions of a stage. 

Wright fully embraces that concept and goes further; for the main story of the hoi-polloi and their social and political gamesmanship, all of the action takes place within the false spaces of a theater (at times even using the rafters as locations for traditional street-scenes): train and carriage scenes are decidedly set-bound with no effort made to reflect a "real" world outside the windows; transitions are made "in-camera" without editing, so a very stagy and choreographed bureaucratic work set-up with synchronized rubbing stamping (set to Dario Marianelli's interesting score) segues to a restaurant scene by merely having the "extras" trade in their black business suits for waiter-whites; a formal society ball is not an intricate commingling of dancers that Wright so effectively engineered in Pride and Prejudice, but is an elaborate ballet, where the participants barely touch and their hand movements are intricately swanning in nothing that approaches a traditional dance (at times, to keep track of the principals, the foreground dancers in our field of vision "freeze" to better make out the focus of our attention). Like Francis Ford Coppola's set-bound version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, It's all very elaborate, "stagey," false, and at times clever but, a lot of the time, merely "showy," like a musical with no libretto, something to separate this "Anna" from the more realistic, even if filmed in-studio, versions. 

The performances run that way, too. Keira Knightley is an exasperating Anna, conflicted but fatally committed to fully expressing whatever is on the surface of her heart. Her P & P co-star, Matthew McFadyen is a burlesque cousin Oblonsky, fatuously showy in a way that reminds of Kevin Kline performing a burlesque role. Jude Law—not one of my favorite performers—here is exceptional as Anna's cuckolded husband, and is so restrained and non-theatrical, that it sets him apart from almost every other performer, isolating him, and is a good short-hand way of showing why Anna might be dissatisfied with him. Olivia Williams has a small part as the Countess Vronsky, whose son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the very florid object of fascination for Anna.

Anna (Keira Knightley) runs from Vronsky at the Ball
and experiences a little fore-lightening from an approaching train.
It's dangerous in a Joe Wright theater.

But, almost the entire film is deliriously fascinated with the artificiality that it undercuts the very real passion and consequences of actions of the people in the film, reducing them to "players" as opposed to human beings.

I say "almost" because Wright does change things up to "open up" the segments featuring Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander), who already have their disappointing encounter with Vronsky and move on. When they reunite, their segments are set in a real world of sky, clouds and fields befitting the couple who exemplify wisdom, forbearance and patience. Wright puts them in our world, relegating the others to an artificial world that is essentially stage-managed (even at the end with a coda of Karenin and the remains of his family, it is contained in the stage-world that Wright has chosen to house his film.

It's different, even interesting in an oddly disrespectful manner, as the flightiness of the bourgeoisie and their concerns are merely shadow-play and window-dressing—it is true to an extent—but by pushing the metaphor so aggressively, it undercuts any feeling one has for the players in the majority of the film itself, and reveals itself as resembling the tut-tutting of the hypocrites who turn against Anna. I'm not sure that Tolstoy had that intention (even strained through Stoppard), and this film might have benefited  from a less facile presentation that required less stage-craft and something more resembling (I don't know) empathy?