Film
Anna Karenina
Joe Wright's version doesn't pretend it's not a story: much of it plays out inside a crumbling theatre, sets swapping mid-scene, a ballroom becoming a racetrack becoming a train station. Tom Stoppard's script and Keira Knightley's brittle, magnetic Anna keep real feeling alive inside all that artifice. Ravishing, mannered, a little cold by design — for people who want tragic romance staged like an opera, not confessed like a diary.
If you liked this
Pride & Prejudice2005
Same director, same star, same appetite for swirling camerawork and charged glances — but here Wright lets romance actually breathe and succeed. Watch his instincts applied to a happier story.
But Cosier, gentler, and ultimately kind to its heroine — you may miss the operatic ruin Anna Karenina builds toward.

Atonement2007
Wright again, with lovers separated by class and a single catastrophic misjudgement. Same lush, painterly camera, same interest in how a rigid social order crushes private feeling.
But War-torn and structurally trickier, with a formal twist near the end that some find clever and others find a cheat.

Doctor Zhivago1965
The other great doomed-Russian-romance epic — snow, revolution, and a love affair that society and history conspire to destroy. Widescreen, unashamedly romantic, hugely influential.
But Over three hours and more interested in historical sweep than in Anna's kind of claustrophobic, interior unravelling.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Brief Encounter1945
Same engine as Anna's story — a respectable woman, a train, a forbidden attraction, and a society that makes the affair impossible — but told with total restraint instead of operatic sweep.
British, black-and-white, decades older, and just as obsessed with a woman risking everything for an affair she can't have — conducted almost entirely in a train station.
But Clipped, repressed, and very English — no lavish ballrooms, just two people quietly destroying themselves over cups of tea.

More like this (8)
The Age of Innocence1993
Scorsese's quietest, most devastating film: desire strangled by drawing-room etiquette instead of bullets. Every glance is a small act of violence in a world built entirely on appearances.
But No scandal, no collapse — just decades of restraint. If you wanted Anna's fireworks, this is all slow-burn ash.

War & Peace2016no page yet
Same author, same aristocratic Russia, and six hours of room for Tolstoy's ideas about love, war and mortality to actually unfold rather than compress.
But Sprawling and multi-stranded rather than one woman's tragedy — a different, more hopeful shape entirely.
Far from the Madding Crowd2015
A fiercely independent woman, three suitors, and a Victorian countryside every bit as beautifully shot. Carey Mulligan gives Bathsheba the same complicated dignity Knightley gives Anna.
But Gentler stakes and a genuinely happy ending — you won't get anywhere near Anna's freefall.

Marie Antoinette2006
Sofia Coppola stages court life as pure theatre too — artificial, gorgeous, aware of its own performance. A sister film in style if not in plot.
But Looser and more impressionistic, with an anachronistic soundtrack that either delights or completely takes you out of it.

The Great Gatsby2013
Luhrmann's maximalist, theatrical excess is the closest thing to Wright's stagecraft you'll find in a Jazz Age setting — doomed love dressed up as spectacle.
But Glossier and shallower, trading Tolstoy's moral weight for glitter and a thumping modern soundtrack.

Bright Star2009no page yet
Jane Campion's hushed, aching account of Keats and Fanny Brawne — a tragic romance told with almost no artifice at all, just light, fabric, and feeling.
But Small, slow and deliberately unglamorous — after Wright's spectacle, it may feel like a whisper after a shout.
Fatal Attraction1987
The same moral machinery — desire outside marriage leading inexorably to ruin — rebuilt as a glossy erotic thriller instead of a period tragedy.
Strip away the corsets and the tragedy becomes a thriller: an affair that starts as escape and ends as annihilation, with a society just as unforgiving underneath the '80s gloss.
But Pure pulp — lurid, contrived, occasionally silly, with none of the literary ambition or moral complexity Anna Karenina takes seriously.

Loveless2017no page yet
Same country, same institution under strain, but a century later and stripped of every ounce of glamour — the aristocratic tragedy replaced by a modern, unadorned domestic wasteland.
A contemporary Russian film about a marriage curdling into cruelty and a family quietly disappearing into indifference — bleak, precise, and unmistakably in Tolstoy's moral territory.
But Cold, spare, and without a shred of Anna's romantic grandeur — this is Russian society's emptiness with no beauty to soften it.
People
Cast
Keira KnightleyAnna Karenina
Jude LawKarenin
Aaron Taylor-JohnsonVronsky
Matthew MacfadyenOblonsky
Eric MacLennanMatvey
Kelly MacdonaldDolly
Alicia VikanderKitty
Domhnall GleesonLevin
Olivia WilliamsCountess Vronsky
Ruth WilsonPrincess Betsy Tverskoy
Emily WatsonCountess Lydia Ivanova
Michelle DockeryPrincess Myagkaya
Directing
- Joe WrightDirector
- Martin HarrisonFirst Assistant Director
- Emma ThomasScript Supervisor
- Susanna LentonScript Supervisor
Writing
- Leo TolstoyNovel
- Tom StoppardScreenplay
Production
- Dixie ChassayCasting
- Jina JayCasting
- Alexandra DerbyshireCo-Producer
- Liza ChasinExecutive Producer
- Alexander DostalLine Producer
- Nick OliverLocation Manager
- Eric FellnerProducer
- Paul WebsterProducer
- Tim BevanProducer
- Hannah CollettProduction Coordinator
Recommended by
Doctor Zhivago, Brief Encounter, Far from the Madding Crowd, Senso, The Earrings of Madame de...