Excellence in Period Film Jacqueline Durran Anna Karenina
Photo: Laurie Sparham/Focus Features
It’s a very cinematic film, and it has a kind of strength to the image also. It’s designed to appeal to the modern eye, and it just leads the viewer. The collaboration between the cinematography, the production design, and myself brings the visual to the forefront. What [director] Joe Wright wanted to happen is that the general audience would just like the costumes, they wouldn’t necessarily know why, but they would appeal to a contemporary sensibility, so that they feel they’re connected. It is also such a great opportunity to be given this completely beautiful actress and for her to be playing beautiful. Keira is such a fantastic actress to work with, and she’s so great at wearing clothes. She’s so stylish, and she can pull off the period-costume look. So you have that element. Then you have the element of late 19th-century Russia as an inspiration, which you lay over a kind of 1950s couture silhouette. I tried to assimilate the kind of simplicity of the lines, the clearness. The ingredients are so fantastic that it’s an absolute gift to be given it. And because it’s such a gift, it’s slightly intimidating because you might not pull it off, but because the elements are so fantastic you have an obligation to do something with them. So, I think there’s that part of it, too, that it’s just a kind of amazing opportunity. An Oscar®-nominated film. ACD — Andrea Cripps
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
Jacqueline West Argo
Chris Terrio’s script was such a page-turner. The descriptions were so vivid, you could see it all in your mind. It was also such a welldocumented period of time. We followed it on the nightly news like a serial thriller, so compelling, sad, and scary, all in one. I had vivid memories, and in revisiting that, it became almost a raison d’être for me to be so exacting and match it to the news footage. The way Rodrigo Prieto shot it, and with Sharon Seymour’s sets, it feels like a film shot then, which is what we were all going for, that feeling of the late ’70s, specifically paranoia films. [Director] Ben Affleck was so demanding that I think we all did a pretty good job at it. I couldn’t have created that feeling in just the clothes without those sets and cinematography, so it definitely took a village.
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The Costume Designer Winter 2013
The chador, the “Flag of the Revolution,” became deeply symbolic for me. Our background players in L.A., who were Iranian, found it extremely hard, emotionally, to wear them, even as a costume. When we shot the airport scene, they came off as soon as they yelled, “Cut.” I realized what it said about the revolution, that the Shah had gone against Allah in letting women not be veiled. In becoming mandatory, rather than a choice honoring your religion, it became a symbol of what was really lost. As my friend Christina Kim put it, “It’s a beautiful garment … if you don’t have to wear it.” ACD — R.J. Hawbaker