Why so much hype?

Let's be realistic.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This adaptation of the film is FAR superior to the 2012 version with Keira Knightley. If you're reading this and want to know which version you should watch, do pick this one. The "stylization" of the other film is just inappropriate for the subject matter. It makes the film look like a joke in comparison. Sophie Marceau is phenomenal as Anna Karenina. Keira Knightley? She doesn't capture the heartbreak as well as Sophie does, in my opinion. It saddens me to think that people will see that version and not this one. Just putting that out there. P.S. Why does IMDb force one to write ten lines? They are also attempting to correct "misspellings". If I spell something wrong, it's meant to be. Fascists.

I do not agree with the earlier reviews that Vivian Leigh played Anna better than Sophy Marceau. It is just that the 1948 version was by itself a better film. The weakness of the 1997 version is that it the scenes are too short and scattered together, and this makes it difficult to express the emotions of the characters and the overall idea behind Tolstoy's novel. But this is the weakness of the movie makers, not the actors. In the 1948 version, the scenes are very detailed and the conversations are long enough to express the idea of each scene. 1948 version is good, but not the best. I don't know if anyone has seen the British miniseries of 2000-2001, but if you want to understand the idea of the book, you should watch it. The cast is not the best, Anna looks old and not suited for this role although she acts perfectly, Vronsky cannot even be compared with Sean Bean, but it's very detailed and just gets deep down to the main core of the novel. It also covers Levin perfectly. The 1997 version pays significant attention to Levin's character as well, but again, because the scenes are too confusing, it will be difficult for those who haven't read the book to understand the true meaning of it. So if the makers of the 1997 version spent a little more time on each scene and included the small details (they make a huge difference), this movie would be absolutely perfect. Other than that, this version is just beautiful with its costumes, music, settings, and cast. It pictures 19th century Russia perfectly unlike any other version before or after it (including the 2000 version).

I'm not sure how this movie slipped past me, as I try to stay on top of the period movies that come out. Nonetheless I caught it on one of the Encore channels last night, and I'm glad I did. Visually this movie is incredible! The cinematography could not have been much better, down to small details such as Levin "mowing" in the fields with the scythe in perfect rhythm with the workers.As much as I like the film, however, I'm disappointed that Sophie Marceau's portrayal of Anna was not more passionate. On the whole I thought her performance was pretty good, but I agree with the comments above that she could have exhibited a much more involved and emotional presence in the face of a love that she could not resist. Ditto for Sean Bean, although he was somewhat better at it than Sophie. It's a situation where one fervently wishes that the actors were better than they were, because you know that it would have made the movie a "10." Both Bean and Marceau did provide some excellent glimpses into the souls of their characters, but only glimpses. One would wish for more intimate looks into their motivations and their respective desolations. I was not at all put off by accents of the actors. So Marceau has a mild French accent...French was the dominant language of the Russian court up to the Revolution, so it would not have been out of place at all.The story of Levin and Kitty fares better, if only because of the stellar performance of Alfred Molina. Offhand I can't think of a more underrated actor (save perhaps Ron Perlman). Ms. Kirshner was fine as Kitty, although her journey from infatuation with Vronsky to love for Levin was given short shrift.Overall I loved this movie, but I just wish it had been two marks better.

According to an earlier review, this movie is supposed to be "just plan awful." The writer probably meant "plain" instead of "plan," and that misspelling may be an indication of the quality of the review.There is much to be said for the viewpoint that this film version of Tolstoy's novel, starring Sophie Marceau, must certainly be one of the greatest versions ever produced.Tolstoy himself lived to see just the beginning of the era of the motion picture and was said to have been fascinated by the possibilities the new medium presented. If so, he would no doubt have been quite astonished at the beauty and the extraordinary quality of this rendition of his story about Anna Karenina. The production values are among the highest there could possibly be. The costumes, the cinematography, and the sets – unlike earlier versions, the film was shot on location in St. Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia – are at such a remarkable level that the action almost does appear to be really taking place in the Czarist period at the end of the nineteenth century.As for Sophie Marceau's mild French accent – which the above-mentioned reviewer found so irritating – it is quite likely that many upper-classes Russians of the period actually did speak with a French accent. It was not Russian but French that was the dominant language among the Russian nobility and aristocracy of the time – for some, French was in fact their native language, since many of them never learned to speak Russian at all, except perhaps a few words and phrases they could use to communicate with the servants.What is perhaps most remarkable of all in this film is the utterly believable way that the behavior of the of characters is presented. Their motives are suggested with great subtlety, not in the somewhat simplistic tones of the (nevertheless still magnificent) MGM version of the film that starred Greta Garbo seventy years ago. Anna's husband is not a monster, for example, in this new version, but a rather pathetic, right-wing government bureaucrat with obsessively strict moral values. Moreover, the portrayal of Anna's behavior throughout the film, and especially in the final scenes, is a masterpiece of sympathetic psychological insight and understanding.This film is a – for the time being, anyway – neglected classic.