Is it strange that some moments at the cinema stay with us the rest of our lives? My mother still recounts the time she and a friend saw DOCTOR ZHIVAGO during its initial release. The 70mm print was projected onto a massive, curved screen and they sat so close to the front of the theater as to be actually within the curve. When the snow blew across the Russian landscape, it wrapped across the periphery of their vision, magically transporting them far, far away.

I remembered this story as I journeyed home after the latest film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel, "Anna Karenina." No, I did not sit close to the screen, but the film similarly transported me, wrapping me in its astounding beauty.

ANNA KARENINA follows the fate of two souls desperate to know true love -- Anna Karenina (played by Sophie Marceau) and Constantin Levin (played by Alfred Molina). Anna's emptiness leads her to an affair with the dashing Count Vronsky (played by Sean Bean). Constantin seeks a safer, but by no means certain, engagement to the incomparable Princess Kitty (Mia Kirshner).

With a plot overview aside, how do I begin to describe a film that is easily the most gorgeous I've seen since SENSE & SENSIBILITY? I can close my eyes and see the gilded halls and the party gowns, the snowy cupolas and the gliding troikas, Anna's pale skin against her black dress, Vronsky's irreproachable uniform with its flawless, gold epaulets.

Among many impressive scenes is one of the Princess Kitty, dashing to join the dance. She turns from a suitor and rushes toward the camera, passing through doorway after doorway as the music swells brighter and stronger. Just when you think she's passed through the last doorway, there's another and another, until finally she emerges to the ballroom. A similar shot in RESTORATION serves to convey the de rigueur majesty of the King. This shot perfectly conveys the grandeur of Kitty's world and her highest hopes in it. (The ballroom scene itself was absolutely divine, the dancers darting across the floor like schools of tropical fish -- but, oh, for its splendor it was just too, too short!)

Visual metaphors abound in ANNA KARENINA. The images are not merely beautiful, they convey meaning. When Anna inwardly decides to capitulate to Count Vronsky's advances, the next shot is of a frozen river, thawed in the foreground, ice chunks undulating. When Constantin is spurned by Kitty, he joins his peasants' field work to escape his pain. The sound of the scythes cutting the grass and the arrangement of the workers in the field are haphazard at first. But slowly, the scythes come into sync and the rows straighten, signifying the return of order to his mind.

The man responsible for these moments is director Bernard Rose. Rose made himself known with his last two features, IMMORTAL BELOVED (with Gary Oldman as Ludwig van Beethoven) and CANDYMAN (a 1992 horror film with surprisingly good aesthetic qualities). Rose wrote the screenplay for those two films, just as he did for ANNA KARENINA. He's certainly come a long way from directing Frankie Goes To Hollywood's video for "Relax." His attention to detail had me watching the slightest tick in Anna's brow; it made the barely audible sound of her breathing integral to the impact of a scene. His cinematographer, Daryn Okada, should get plenty of praise, as should production designer, John Mhyre (who was supervising art director for IMMORTAL BELOVED).

Sophie Marceau, who plays Anna, has done a pile of French films, but American audiences will most likely recognize her as Princess Isabelle from BRAVEHEART. Likewise, Sean Bean, who plays Vronsky, has done tons of British TV, but I recognized him as the IRA renegade who hunted Harrison Ford in PATRIOT GAMES (I didn't see him as 006 in GOLDENEYE). I'm glad to see Alfred Molina in the role of Constantin; the last flicks I saw him in were SPECIES and HIDEAWAY (oof). I tend to think he has ability that has yet to be properly exploited; ANNA KARENINA is a start.

Now for the difficult part.

All the praise I've bestowed on this film makes it harder to confess the one thing I must: ANNA KARENINA is just the slightest bit... well... dull. The dramatic momentum of the film is simply not equal to its visual impact. I rarely felt very close to the characters, nor did I fully feel the turbulence of their dilemmas and decisions. This is not to say I was outright bored. I just wasn't as enthralled with the story as I was with the filmmaking.

And while I'm nit-picking... I was somewhat confused by the use of language. The main characters speak mainly in English, while the peasants and servants speak Russian. While this clearly demonstrated the gulf between the gentry and the serfs, I became confused when the aristocratic characters spoke Russian to each other. It made me imagine that the upper class really was speaking English all the time.

The accents accompanying that English threw me off, too. Sophie Marceau's accent seems downright American, as does Mia Kirshner. But periodically Marceau would slide toward French. Sean Bean's Anglo accent waxes and wanes as well. Only Alfred Molina's British accent stayed strong and clear. It's nitpicking, I know, but I would have preferred the characters speak with a British accent (a convention among American movies depicting non-English speakers) or that they attempt to mimic Russian speech.

But forget about the accents, the locales and the music *are* authentically Russian. The credits proudly proclaim, "Filmed entirely on location in St. Petersburg and Moscow," The fabulous settings include Catherine the Great's Winter Palace and The Hermitage art museum. As for music, there's more Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev than you can shake a stick at, as well as some stunning peasant songs.

I am shamefully unqualified to compare this ANNA KARENINA to its predecessors. I have seen none of the six or seven prior film adaptations, nor have I read the book (yes, yes, I know I must). In fact, it took me more than half of the movie to remember the one thing I ever knew about ANNA KARENINA -- later, with that in mind, I would take a moment's pause before stepping onto the subway for the ride home.

For me, seeing ANNA KARENINA was like going on a date with an incredibly beautiful, though slightly dull, woman. What she had to say was not as engaging as how she looked. But, still, it's hard for me to come away displeased with the evening.

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