Matthew's Journal

I approached this film from a position of considerable ignorance - I knew it was a novel by Tolstoy that had been adapted for film before, but that was about it. It's a rather self-consciously fictional film - the action bleeds in and out of stage sets, model trains become real trains and vice versa, and so on. Some people I know found this too intrusive, but I rather enjoyed it (maybe I've watched too many odd films recently!), although some of what was going to happen was fairly clearly foreshadowed. The plot runs along at a fair pace, and it's beautiful to look at. My main problem was that I didn't find Anna herself a very sympathetic character, so some of the emotional impact was lost.