Matthew Macfadyen should be in everything. He should. He's good in everything, he's very good in this. Yeah. It's a little jam of a performance and he clearly has a way.

It also boasts brilliant performances all around. This is one of those films in which everyone is someone, so if you’re a fan of British film and television it’s filled with unexpected delights. Matthew Macfadyen - who can often be understated to the point of insomnia - is perhaps the most engaging he has ever been, and steals almost every scene he’s in.

Jude Law was magnificent and so was Matthew Macfadyen. I am not biased, I will only describe the both of them as wonderful. If you want to see Jude Law act in his best film, and melt at Matthew Macfayden’s ‘cheeky’ Oblonsky, go and see it.

... and lest we forget, Matthew Macfadyen. He steals the show, doesn't he? Oblonsky steals absolutely every single scene he's in. He's got this Cheshire Cat grin and every minute he was on screen, I just wished he was there. I'm going to make a YouTube video of every Matthew Macfadyen scene in Anna Karenina and watch it over and over and over again. He's a wonderful man.

Arrived here [film premiere Toronto] with Jude [Law] and Keira [Knightley] and Matthew Macfadyen. Film premieres are coldly hierarchical affairs, and this has to be treated with a sense of humour or you could go under. One of the big tells is how high your hotel room is. Matthew and I eagerly opened our envelopes wondering what, out of a possible 15, we’d score on the celebrity ladder. He got a suite on the 6th and I grumblingly trudged off to the 5th.

... Wright sets the film primarily in a giant theatre-space, a grand series of interconnected, archaic halls representing the artifice of Russian aristocratic society. Private moments take place before the eyes of a gossiping audience, paper snow falls indoors before a fake backdrop of Moscow, model trains turn to the real thing in a single jump cut, and the central conceit is that only people living honest, pure lives (like Domhnall Gleeson’s Levin) can escape through giant stage doors into the real world. Those trapped in the vortex of a claustrophobic public life have to remain on display before spectators, within rooms that change from one minute to the next.

There is one scene in particular that stands out. Gluttonous Prince Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) greets Levin at his office space – a warehouse full of labourers stamping papers in hypnotic rhythm – before agreeing to dine with him later. Levin exits. The office then begins shifting before our eyes from a drab office into a gleaming St. Petersburg restaurant, while the office workers shed their dull garb to become colourfully-dressed waiters and musicians. Levin again enters the room – now a decadent eatery – and finds Oblonsky waiting calmly in the midst of all the mayhem, eating at a table set for two. All that happens in a single take...

... Films that stand out, that break barriers, that seek to bring something unique to the audience take a great deal of courage from a filmmaker. Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is that kind of film. We may not see another like it, and doesn’t that make it something to cherish? In this lazy climate, vampire movies and found footage horrors are churned out on a weekly basis. Nothing special. In a movie world so taken with the cult of conformity, pictures with ambition – pictures with balls – deserve attention from everyone.

Joe Wright, der Schlingel, erfindet das Rad auch nicht immer neu. Er hat, wie man hier sieht, sehr deutliche Anleihen beim deutschen Maler Karl Friedrich Schinkel gemacht, dessen Bühnenbild für Mozarts "Zauberflöte" aus dem Jahr 1816 noch immer unerreicht ist und sogar heute noch in Inszenierungen Verwendung findet...

Schinkels Bühnenbild für das Erscheinen der Königing der Nacht in der "Zauberflöte"

Und das, was Joe Wright in "AK" nutzte (die Dame davor ist mir allerdings unbekannt, das Bild stammt von Universal Pictures, Spain)

Joe Wright, der Schlingel, erfindet das Rad auch nicht immer neu. Er hat, wie man hier sieht, sehr deutliche Anleihen beim deutschen Maler Karl Friedrich Schinkel gemacht, dessen Bühnenbild für Mozarts "Zauberflöte" aus dem Jahr 1816 noch immer unerreicht ist und sogar heute noch in Inszenierungen Verwendung findet...

Sarah Greenwood, Production Designer. So stands jedenfalls im vorher geposteten Clip.

The tone of the film never wallows in the despair of high society. It instead chooses to buzz electrically among the key players of the film, offering a foil of sorts to the societal wreck that Anna and company present in the form of supporting characters like Oblonsky, who choose simplicity over the complicated manner of the aristocratic life. ...
The overall production design combined with the costumes, the cinematography, and the art direction wrap Anna Karenina into a surefire front-runner to Oscar glory.