War and Peace (Voyna i mir)
Directed by Sergei Bandarchuk
Written by Sergei Bandarchuk and Vasiliy Solovyov
1966/USA
Mosflim
Repeat viewing/FilmStruck
[box] “Everything I know, I know because of love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace[/box]
This eight-hour, four-film epic is perhaps the most comprehensive version of Tolstoy’s great sprawling novel. What it lacks in sophistication it makes up for in grandeur.
The novel is set during the Napoleon Wars, approx. 1805 to 1812. The Rostovs are a very loving aristocratic family who live in Moscow. Lively daughter Natalia/Natasha falls in love with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky after the death of his wife in childbirth. She is very young and so the couple agree to wait a year before announcing their engagement. Natasha is too immature for this arrangement and impulsively runs off with a cad. She is rescued from disgrace but the marriage is off.
Pierre Bezukhov (Bandarchuk) is the illegitimate son of a wealthy Count. Before he dies, the count recognizes his paternity, leaving Pierre one of the wealthiest men in Russia. Pierre is socially awkward and is easily exploited by a fickle beauty who wants him for his money.
Natasha serves a period of penance before the horrors of war coincidentally reunite her with Bolkonsky. She nurses him as he dies of a wound suffered during the battle of Borodino. The fortunes of all decline as the French invade Moscow which has been strategically surrendered.
The Soviets surely understood Tolstoy and the tone and acting are impeccable. The film reaches deep into the novel. For example, Tolstoy does a sequence where he gets into the mind of a wolf being hunted. This is captured in the film but is filmed in what I found to be an off-putting arty way. The battle scenes are excellent but also sometimes subject to that self-consciously arty style that didn’t work for me. Nonetheless recommended for lovers of the novel.
War and Peace won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It was nominated in the category of Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.
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