Anna Karenina

LITTLE ROCK — Anna Karenina

88 Cast: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jude Law, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson Director: Joe Wright Rating: R, for some sexuality and violence Running time: 130 minutes

“Sumptuous” is the word for Joe Wright’s self-consciously stylish and highly entertaining movie of Count Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina — the film is at least half fashion show, an opportunity to feast on visuals.

And that in itself might present a problem for those of us charged with thinking about the movies, for while any film version of Anna Karenina must necessarily be reductive, should Tolstoy’s tragic masterpiece of realistic fiction be rendered as light entertainment?

I don’t really have an answer for that, though I will say that Wright’s treatment initially struck me as ingenious.