Artifice, rather than art, is the keystone of this adaptation of Tolstoy’s much-filmed novel by Tom Stoppard and Joe Wright. Visually stunning but emotionally vapid, it’s a one-trick pony that reduces the tragic dimension of its source to an ornate soap operatic bauble. This “Anna Karenina” is as misguided in its way as Andrea Arnold’s recent “Wuthering Heights” was—though, to be sure, it’s much easier on the eye than that claustrophobic, mud-splattered effort was.

In purely narrative terms Stoppard and Wright hew quite closely to the text. Anna (Keira Knightley) is wed to Karenin (Jude Law), a brusquely efficient czarist minister, and has a son, Serozha (Oskar McNamara) by the martinet. But she’s irrationally drawn to Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a handsome, dashing cavalry officer, and scandal erupts around them. Her husband demands that she abide by the unspoken rules that govern imperial society, but when she demands her freedom, he tells her she can go to Vronsky, but she will never see her child again. And when she leaves for her lover, her husband cuts her off as he threatened, and she finds herself shunned by most of her former friends and acquaintances. Ultimately, of course, she sees no recourse but suicide.

Fidelity to Tolstoy is also reflected in the inclusion of the novel’s secondary plot, about the principled farmer Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) who seeks the hand of Kitty (Alicia Vikander). Levin’s friendship with Anna’s brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) links the two plot strands as Kitty, at first infatuated with Vronsky, turns to Levin after the soldier becomes involved with Anna, and their union proves as durable as the Karenins’ does fragile.

But while faithful in plot terms, this “Anna Karenina” couldn’t be more different from Tolstoy in tone and emotional effect. The conceit on which Stoppard bases his treatment is that Russian society of the nineteenth century was a kind of theatre, a set of rituals that governed behavior; and if one failed to observe them—as Anna did by leaving her husband for her lover—that person would become a social outcast. In line with this, he chooses to fashion the story as a theatrical performance, actually situating it on a stage and periodically showing the performers facing the empty rows of seats. Wright takes up the notion, using sets that are ostentatiously artificial, even in most of the outdoor sequences. (The trains are usually models rather than actual locomotives, and although a few sequences are actually shot in open fields, they’re shot to make them look vaguely unreal. As does the snow, though its unreality is more extravagant.)

The blatant artifice extends beyond the backgrounds to the acting as well. Apart from Knightley, who brings some real passion to Anna (even if it often comes across as more calculated than authentic), the cast is a stilted bunch. In Gleeson’s hands Levin is just a stiff, and Macfadyen plays Oblonsky for comic effect, his clerical scenes staged like a spoof on Kafka-esque regimentation. Vikander is gorgeous but makes Kitty a flighty, inconsequential sort.

But it’s Law and Taylor-Johnson who suffer most from Wright’s approach. With Karenin’s long coat and perpetually dour expression, Law looks and sounds alarmingly like the animated villain he’s currently voicing in “Rise of the Guardians.” Taylor-Johnson, resplendent in his candy-colored military uniforms, was obviously selected for his appearance. With his alabaster skin (carefully displayed in a semi-revealing, artfully composed bedroom scene), he looks like someone who’s stolen in from “The Nutcracker.” And little else is asked of him.

The result is that this “Anna Karenina” has an incredibly detached, chilly feel. It’s impossible to become emotionally concerned with these characters, who come across like pawns being moved around a theatrical chessboard rather than flesh-and-blood human beings. It is, however, a very beautiful, though highly stylized, chessboard. Sarah Greenwood’s production design, Niall Moroney’s art direction, Katie Spencer’s set decoration and Jacqueline Durran’s costume design all have a lovely period tone, and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s luminous widescreen lensing captures all the luscious detail in glistening, halo-filled images.

Except as a purely visual experience, however, this “Karenina” is a disappointment. More a clever but repetitive commentary on the novel than a deeply-felt response to it, Wright’s film cheats us of the tragic catharsis that Tolstoy demanded of his readers.