Le scénario de Tom Stoppard

Tolstoy wrote it as an accessible piece. It’s a family drama. War and Peace was his big political drama and Anna Karenina, as he says in the first sentence, is about families. 'Happy families are all happy in the same way. Unhappy families are all unhappy in different ways.' So he wrote it to be read by the new emerging literate Russian population. Obviously, it goes off into analytical theoretical studies of the Russian agricultural system which I won’t involve in the script. But the actual plot of it is fairly simple and very emotional."

Wright will focus on the multi-stranded nature of the novel, incorporating all the other characters’ stories, not just Anna’s.He notes that the screenplay — which is being written by that no-talent hack playwright/screenwriter Tom Stoppard — will feel Robert Altmanesque in structure. Wright is a fan — and was a good friend — of Altman.

There is no Inception-type puzzle to solve; the story of AK remains firmly their film. Wright's daring vision is about enhancing the central drama. "The stylisation is not an embellishment but a subtraction," he says. "This is possibly my least indulgent film; everything is at the service of the story. And this is the most amazing study of love, and I am interested in love and why and how the fuck it works."

‘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 good husband and a bad wife. But then, as he wrote, he fell in love with Anna.’

Wright’s basing his version of Tolstoy’s great novel on a powerful screenplay by Tom Stoppard, in which the playwright gives equal weight to the parallel stories of Anna’s cuckolding of her husband 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 previous versions made the mistake of favouring Anna’s story over Levin’s. ‘Tom turned in one draft and it was all there,’ marvels producer Paul Webster.

With Mark Lawson, including an interview with Tom Stoppard about his TV adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End and his screenplay for Anna Karenina.

On the surface at least, Anna Karenina seems to have brought together Stoppard the playwright and Stoppard the scriptwriter for the first time — almost the entire film, including the famous steeplechase scene, is set in a rundown Moscow theatre. In fact, the idea to set it in a theatre came not from him, but from the director, Joe Wright.

“All that happened long after I’d written the script. However, I admire the boldness of it. Possibly there’s a price to play in some respects, but I think it’s worth it. Certainly, I’d be feeling a lot more uncomfortable if I was sitting here suspecting that we’d succeeded in making the 78th beautiful costume drama of the last five years. I think of that as being a fate that we’ve escaped.”

“The producers had amazing faith in me (Joe), but the person I was most scared of telling about this was Tom because he’d written this script which was brilliant and perfect and set in the way he’d envisaged the film. At first he was nervous, but then he came ‘round. I took his text and transposed it from real locations to the stylized location; every single event and word in his adaptation was shot.”

Stoppard remembers, “Joe told me he didn’t want to alter the script – aside from the scene, or stage, directions – but at first I didn’t know what I thought. He then came to see me with this scrapbook which contained the film as he now saw it. Seeing it, I put my money on him to pull this off.”

On the surface at least, Anna Karenina seems to have brought together Stoppard the playwright and Stoppard the scriptwriter for the first time — almost the entire film, including the famous steeplechase scene, is set in a rundown Moscow theatre. In fact, the idea to set it in a theatre came not from him, but from the director, Joe Wright.

“All that happened long after I’d written the script. However, I admire the boldness of it. Possibly there’s a price to play in some respects, but I think it’s worth it. Certainly, I’d be feeling a lot more uncomfortable if I was sitting here suspecting that we’d succeeded in making the 78th beautiful costume drama of the last five years. I think of that as being a fate that we’ve escaped.”

While Kiera Knightly is Anna, Tannishtha is playing Masha, the beleaguered female companion of Nicholas. “Initially, in the script it was quite substantial but in the version that I saw recently in London, it has come down quite a bit. Still I have a song and it is quite unique.”

Shot in London and Russia, the film has a period setting but a contemporary zing to it, says Tannishtha. “It deals with different layers of a love story. There is debauched love story, there is a pure love story… then there is a love story with a class conflict of which I am a part

Tom Stoppard says his original approach to writing the screenplay for Joe Wright's new film adaptation of Anna Karenina was for a fast, modern movie about being in lust. Then wiser counsels – including his own – prevailed

Marina a écrit:5 SEPT: INDEX AT THE PICTUREHOUSE – A PREVIEW OF ANNA KARENINA + LIVE Q&A WITH SIR TOM STOPPARD (Index on censorship, 10 août 2012).

To celebrate our 40th birthday, Index is teaming up with Picturehouse cinemas to host a preview screening of Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright, featuring Keira Knightley and Jude Law. The screening will be followed by a live Q&A with screenplay writer Sir Tom Stoppard, chaired by Sandra Hebron, which will be broadcast by satellite to 19 Picturehouse venues around the UK.

while still holding off with titles not yet in theaters such as Anna Karenina

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TOM STOPPARD

Our most esteemed living playwright adapts the most famous love story ever written in the screenplay for the new Focus Features film Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law.

Tolstoy’s brilliant novel, tracing the tragic love affair between Count Vronsky and the unhappily married Anna, has moved readers for generations. Now, award-winning playwright Tom Stoppard re-imagines what Vladimir Nabokov called “one of the greatest love stories in world literature” for the screen. In an impeccable match of talent between source and adaptation, Stoppard projects Tolstoy’s powerful contrasts between city and country, love and death, happiness and unhappiness. The result is beautiful, stirring, and at once old and new. A special introduction by Stoppard offers a glimpse into the process behind his remarkable interpretation.

Spoiler:

The producers had amazing faith in me (Joe), but the person I was most scared of telling about this was Tom because he’d written this script which was brilliant and perfect and set in the way he’d envisaged the film. At first he was nervous, but then he came ‘round. I took his text and transposed it from real locations to the stylized location; every single event and word in his adaptation was shot.”

Stoppard remembers, “Joe told me he didn’t want to alter the script – aside from the scene, or stage, directions – but at first I didn’t know what I thought. He then came to see me with this scrapbook which contained the film as he now saw it. Seeing it, I put my money on him to pull this off.

This was a few weeks before we went into production, and he came to my flat with this big file, which turned out to contain the storyboards of a lot of the movie.

AwardsLine: Once you got into postproduction, what kind of changes did you see?

Stoppard: You always end up with too much, so it’s good to be part of the conversation about not just what you can omit, but how you are going to do the grammar of the omission, how you make things continue to work when there’s something missing. It’s your last chance to rewrite. Rewriting isn’t just about dialogue, it’s the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene. All these final decisions are best made when you’re there, watching. It’s really enjoyable, but you’ve got to be there at the director’s invitation. You can’t just barge in and say, “I’m the writer.” (Laughs.)

Luce a écrit: J'aimerais tant voir maintenant le "storyboard" de David Allcock que Joe Wright a présenté à Tom Stoppard ...

Matthieu a écrit:Q&A: Tom Stoppard On Anna Karenina (Awards Line, 28 décembre 2012).

Anna Karenina was a happy time, too. What you want to have happen is to write your first draft because for a writer, it's not a first draft -- it's it. It's only other people who tell you it's a first draft. Although one keeps working, of course, right through postproduction. Essentially, [director] Joe Wright read the first draft and liked it very much. That's always a good start, isn't it?