SIMPLYGAMES - Key Persons
Anna Karenina is acclaimed director Joe Wright's bold, theatrical new vision of the epic story of love, stirringly adapted from Leo Tolstoy's great novel by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love). The film marks the third collaboration of the director with Academy Award-nominated actress Keira Knightley and Academy Award-nominated producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Paul Webster, following their award-winning box office successes Pride & Prejudice and Atonement. The timeless story powerfully explores the capacity for love that surges through the human heart, while illuminating the lavish society that was imperial Russia. The year is 1874. Vibrant and beautiful, Anna Karenina (Keira Knightley) has what any of her contemporaries would aspire to: she is the wife of Karenin (Jude Law), a high-ranking government official to whom she has borne a son, and her social standing in St. Petersburg could scarcely be higher. She journeys to Moscow after a letter from her philandering brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) arrives, asking for Anna to come and help save his marriage to Dolly (Kelly Macdonald). En route, Anna makes the acquaintance of Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams), who is then met at the train station by her son, the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When Anna is introduced to Vronsky, there is a mutual spark of instant attraction that cannot--and will not--be ignored.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton star in this Academy Award-winning, epic retelling of the life and loves of the Egyptian queen. Desperate to hold onto her throne in the face of Roman expansion, Cleopatra (Taylor) employs all her charms in an attempt to secure an alliance with Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison). When Caesar is subsequently murdered, however, a vulnerable Cleopatra quickly turns her affections to popular Roman general Mark Antony (Burton). But although the relationship initially fares well, it's not long before the once proud general, now emasculated by the queen's charms, is reduced to a shadow of his former self that presages the doomed lovers' ultimate fate.