Keira Knightley, as Anna Karenina, emerges from the mist, her stare focussed on her spouse — and her lover — played by Jude Law and Aaron Johnson, respectively.
The actress is in an embroidered coat that sweeps the floor, a hat trimmed in fox fur — and £1 million worth of Chanel gems, dangling from her ears.
The costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, has at the question for of director Joe Wright, made a hybrid look for Keira, in which 1870s style meets fitted Fifties couture, and the result is stunning.
Huge screen starlet: Keira Knightley
Anna Karenina is Tolstoy’s giant meditation on the aspects of like, and Keira, now 26, is clearly up to the task of playing one of the greatest heroines in literature.
I’ve been following Keira’s career for years, but as I stood looking at her on the set of Anna Karenina, something had changed. The film’s hair and make-up designer Ivana Primorac articulated my thoughts. ‘Keira looks like a proper woman,’ she says
Director Joe Wright, who is filming the train station scene at Shepperton studios, tells me: ‘There’s fire in Keira’s belly.’
He’s directing her for the third time, having worked with her on Pride And Prejudice and Atonement.
And he agrees that Keira has grown up. ‘She’s her own woman — she’s got so much fight in her at the moment,’ he says, as he watches her being framed by Seamus McGarvey, the director of photography, and camera operator Peter Robertson.
She’s a star: The actress puts in a star turn as Anna Karenina
He tells me that Keira’s full a lot of stick in England, in the years since they last worked together.
‘A lot of young actors would have gone “Up yours!’ and gone off to Hollywood. But she braved it out, and it has made her stronger — and fiercer,’ Wright adds, with a slightly nervous laugh.
The director believes Keira is more than ready to play Anna — but not a 20th-century feminist version of Anna, ‘following her heart’.
‘As far as Tolstoy was concerned, he was writing a book about a woman who was a sinner — a fallen woman,’ Wright says. ‘He wasn’t writing about her as a heroine. He started off writing this book about a excellent spouse and a terrible wife. But then, as he wrote, he fell in like with Anna.’
Wright’s basing his version of Tolstoy’s fantastic novel on a powerful screenplay by Tom Stoppard, in which the playwright gives equal weight to the parallel tales of Anna’s cuckolding of her spouse Karenin (Law), and her passionate affair with Count Vronsky (Johnson), and also the romance between Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander).
Stoppard’s view is that most before versions made the mistake of favouring Anna’s tale over Levin’s. ‘Tom turned in one draft and it was all there,’ marvels producer Paul Webster.
Tim Bevan of Working Title, who is making the film for Focus Films and Universal, told me it’s the initially time Wright has worked with a fantastic screenplay. ‘Joe’s had excellent scripts, but this is a fantastic one,’ says Bevan, a man not known for idle overstatement.
Wright and his long-time design collaborator Sarah Greenwood checked out locations in St Petersburg, and stately homes in the UK (particularly in Yorkshire) which could double as Russian homes.
But the more Wright studied Russian cultural history, the more he realised he didn’t want to shoot a square costume drama.
The eureka moment came as he pored over Orlando Figes’s study of Russian cultural history, Natasha’s Dance, which suggested the aristocrats of St Petersburg in the 1870s were more western European in their behaviour than Russian.
‘The aristocrats spar Italian, English and French — and Russian only to the serfs. There was a sense that they were always playing parts,’ producer Webster clarified.
So Wright hit on the thought of doing an expressionistic version of Anna Karenina, emphasising that theatricality. Greenwood designed a theatre on a soundstage at Shepperton, from which the action would flow. You go through a door and there’s a train station; go through another and there’s a snowy street, or a forest of silver birch.
Even as most of the filming was done on lavish sets, there were real life locations, too; and some shooting is being done in Russia, for the more naturalistic scenes involving Levin and Kitty.
The scenes I watched looked incredible. Ornate tableaux peopled with extras of Russian heritage, all choreographed to go in a certain way.
And the cast is as rich as Greenwood’s sets. Ruth Wilson plays Princess Betsy; Olivia Williams is Countess Vronsky; Emily Watson plays Countess Lydia; Kelly Macdonald is Dolly; and Matthew Macfadyen, Oblonsky.
Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery has been cast as Princess Myagkaya, even as her former co-star Thomas Howes (William, the ill-intended footman) plays Yashvin.
Michael Stipe of REM and Frances McDormand were staring at themselves.
Tilda Swinton, in a loose-fitting, white silk trouser suit, was standing in front of a painting of herself, sleeping.
The works were by Tilda’s partner, Sandro Kopp, and he made the pieces, showed around the walls of the Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York’s Lower East Side, by having people sit for him via Skype, the internet phone service.
Art’s sake: Sandro Kopp and Tilda Swinton pictured at Istanbul ’74 Presents Sandro Kopp ‘There You Are’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
‘On average, I would need people to sit for at least three hours,’ Kopp told me.
‘I’d be in Scotland and the people could be on the other side of the world, or just upstairs.’
His models included Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe — and his own mother.
Upstairs at the gallery, there was a video installation showing Kopp going through the creative process.
After her Manhattan sojourn, Tilda will star in Joon-ho Bong’s film Snow Piercer, a psychological thriller set 20 years in the possibility. ‘It’s the end of the world, and a group of people are stuck on a train on a snowy landscape,’ Tilda clarified. She wouldn’t say much about her character, except that she’s reasonably amusing.
Following Snow Piercer, Tilda will make Jim Jarmusch’s as-yet-untitled next picture. And just as I was being given this information, I saw Jarmusch in the flesh, studying his Skype portrait.
Rom-com: Rashida Jones who co-wrote and stars in Celeste and Jesse Forever
Rashida Jones, who co-wrote and stars in the movie Celeste
And Jesse Forever, a perfectly observed romantic comedy which had a
excellent reception when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Jones and
Andy Samberg play a divorced couple who still live together. Celeste is
razor sharp; Jesse, less so.
Celeste co-owns a design/branding company with Elijah Wood and she’s
brutally honest, with a enchantingly fiery temperament. For me, she was
the heart of the film — the heat went when she wasn’t on screen.
Ari Graynor, who is hilarious in For A Excellent Time Call . . ., another
Sundance film. She plays a young woman who runs a telephone sex line
from her New York flat. But her sideline is in danger of being cut off
when she’s forced to take in a prim flatmate (Lauren Anne Miller, who
co-wrote the film with Katie Anne Naylon). It’s Bridesmaids-style
silliness, but Graynor’s superior comic performance makes you take
notice. She’s like a young Bette Midler.
Quvenzhane Wallis, an eight-year-ancient who plays six-year-ancient Hushpuppy, a
bright and inventive girl at the heart of the Cajun fairy tale Beasts
Of The Southern Wild. Set in southern Louisiana, it’s an incredible
movie and is the stunning directorial debut of Benh Zeitlin. John
Cooper, director of the Sundance Film Festival, told me it was the one
movie that would tell me the most about the disorder of America. I hope
Clare Stewart, the new director of the BFI London Film Festival, secures
it this year, although I suspect it will turn up at Cannes initially. It’s a
fabulous picture.
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