Even though the name is Anna Karenina. An intimate diary adorns a poster on the website of the Modern Theater, this is not a performance, but a film, which is especially noted in the poster: "Experimental film 16+ Cinema!" - exactly so, capsized and with an exclamation mark.
To be honest, I love more films, so this item of the program, despite all my love for Modern, postponed quite a long time. But I tried to look for information about the film on the network, and found out the interesting thing - in the network the film can not be found, the list of actors involved in the film, no, reviews and ratings on Kinopoisk there - but on the poster.ru is: it seems that theatermen watch the film, and moviegoers do not. In a word, my interest eventually reached a critical mass and I still decided to see this creation of the director and artistic director of the Modern Theater Yuri Grymov.
So, the film really turned out to be an experiment of its kind and the lack of a list of busy actors is completely justified - there are simply no professional actors in the film. This hour and a half of screen time, like a puzzle, is collected from more than 100,000 videos posted in the open access on the Internet. Yuri Grymov, having spent five years, literally created his own film language, surprisingly understandable to the ordinary ordinary unprepared viewer, what not every "experimental film" can boast, by the way, and at the same time, undoubtedly, a new, beautiful, figurative ... and not primitive, despite its availability.
A slightly intriguing phrase in the film's title is "Intimate Diary" which means "personal diary." According to the director, the film is based on entries from the diary of Karenina, who kept her daughter. In general, the story is really based on the novel by Lev Nikolayevich, and the voiceover reading the diary, neatly, though controversially, leads us from the first pages to the well-known denouement in quite Tolstoy’s language. However, the video does not let you get bored (and so who doesn’t know the story of Anna Karenina?!), or take your eyes off the screen – there, quickly changing each other, flashes from the present, illustrating the whole history, but – today. Everything that happens is happening these days and around the world, in nine different countries. Different faces, different traditions, different background - and the same emotions, passions, ups and disappointments.
The film shows that not only do people not change over time, but also that geography is beyond the control of human passions. All over the world, people fall in love, get married, have children, suffer, get frustrated. There is love everywhere and always, but there is prejudice and dislike and despair and happiness and public opinion and hope. . .
If you consider this film an experiment, it definitely succeeded. If we consider it as a film adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel, it also succeeded. In short, I think it’s strong and that the film is very much worth seeing. But it seems to me that you need to watch it not at home, but in the (cinema) theater, so as not to be distracted by anything else, otherwise this ingeniously created kaleidoscope risks for the distracted viewer to break up on the audio track and flashing video cutting, losing all its integrity and charm.
And it also seems to me that such a clip-like presentation can especially appeal to the younger generation, brought up on commercials and music videos, tick-current and so on. Even those (or especially those!) who have not read the novel themselves - for them the intrigue will also remain, which, of course, should be great.
And separately, as always, I want to note the ability of Yuri Grymov skillfully and very accurately select music for his works. The sound at the end of the film “Silence” performed by Diana Arbenina is the perfect hit.