Anna Karenina (1948)

After watching a movie with your children or students, we encourage parents and teachers to look for education opportunities to teach with movies. Here are a few discussion topics that can help with lesson plans or teaching in the home.

How does the director use snow in this movie to depict the coldness of the relationships and the dreariness of the circumstances?

Should love trump every other commitment or duty that a person has? What does Alexei mean when he says there is a proper way to carry on an affair? Do you agree with Alexei’s decision to tell his son that the boy’s mother had died? Is that less harmful to the boy than knowing his mother abandoned him?

How do Anna’s self-centeredness, jealousy and emotional insecurity weary the men (and women) in her life? How do those traits impact her ability to have a stable and enduring relationship?

Anna Karenina is based on a novel by the Russian author, Leo Tolstoy.