The original Russian poster for the film
In his introduction to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Dave Eggers writes, “We’re interested in epic writerly ambition. We’re fascinated with what can be made by a person with enough time and focus…We’re interested in human possibility, and we are able to cheer each other on to leaps in science and athletics and art and thought, we must admire the works that our peers have managed to create.” As little as I may care for his other work, I take this statement to heart. I very much prefer my art to be absurdly massive in scope. My three favorite films have an average run time of four and a half hours and my three favorite books (a list that does include Infinite Jest) average 1065 pages. So it would seem that when one of those three books is adapted into a film that runs over four hundred minutes, I should view it as a sort of miracle convergence of everything I love in the world. Alas, this is not the case with Sergei Bondarchuk’s frustrating and mediocre War And Peace, a work that proves massive scope is not always enough.
Although it is ultimately an exasperating film, there is actually much to learn from Bondarchuk’s War And Peace. First, and perhaps most problematic to the film’s success as an adaptation, is that when you’re an inexperienced director making what is, by almost any measure, the single largest film that the medium ever has and likely ever will see, do not cast yourself in the lead. I’ll deal with my issues with the adaptation later, but needless to say, Bondarchuk is as ill-suited to play Pierre Bezhukov as Henry Fonda was in the unwatchable American adaptation from the previous decade. Second is an issue that is more problematic for its success as a film: under those same circumstances, do not skimp on film stock. This was of course the most expensive film ever made in the Soviet Union, so they chose to use terrible Soviet-made 70mm film stock instead of swallowing their pride and buying German or American stock. This worked out about as well as you would imagine.
One of the many impressive battle scenes
When I began the film, I wanted to avoid discussing issues of adaptation in my review. The film and the book are completely separate works of art and I did not want to judge them by the same criteria. Unfortunately, in this case I don’t think that would have been possible. The film is less an adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel than a staging of certain scenes with little connective tissue. I honestly do not believe that the film would make the slightest bit of sense to someone unfamiliar with the book. There are dozens of examples throughout that I could pick, but I think the most notable is Napoleon’s retreat following the burning of Moscow at the end of the war. In the book, Tolstoy gives us a long and detailed explanation of the historical factors and of the philosophies of war and history to set the stage for how this could have happened. In the film, a messenger comes and says that the French are gone, even though the scene before is them looting the city in victory. How is a viewer, particularly one who isn’t familiar with the intimate details of the Napoleonic wars, supposed to see this moment? I really don’t know. Of course the biggest problem with adapting War And Peace is that the novel’s main themes are laid out in non-narrative authorial digressions. The story itself is of course magnificent, but to express the philosophy and psychology of the novel on screen would take a far greater talent and far more time than this film possessed.
I also have no idea which changes were made to please Soviet sensors. Almost all of the religious subplots are completely dropped, most notably Pierre’s flirtation with freemasonry and Princess Maria’s Christian awakening, which seems to fit right in with Communist ideology. In the book, many characters, particularly Nikolai Rostov, spend countless pages praising the czar as a sort of God, which was of course not going to make the film. That being said, the film puts much less focus on the suffering of the common man than the novel. Outside of the war scenes, which are occasionally rendered inert by the lack of recognizable characters, we see very little of the suffering of peasants and serfs. We are presented with the novel’s wealthy characters for the narrative and wide shots of soldiers for national pride, but the issues of the proletariat are inexplicably ignored. Most confusingly, we are given nothing of the people’s decision to use a scorched Earth technique against Napoleon. Tolstoy makes it clear that this was a choice made by the common people and is ultimately the main reason that Napoleon’s army was destroyed, something you’d think the Soviets would celebrate rather than ignore. I think it would have been fascinating to see the story through a more aggressively communist perspective, but instead we just get a bunch of half measures.
Natasha weeps over the injured Andrei
The movie focuses almost entirely on the stories of the book’s three most important characters, Natasha Rostov and her two potential suitors, the longtime friends Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky. This means that it more or less entirely drops every subplot and limits the supporting characters, such Nikolai Rostov, Princess Maria and the German Dennisov, to little more than cameo appearances. This in and of itself does not necessarily bother me. I understand that the book is still far too large for eight hours to cover everything. I am bothered because even with the focus on these three main characters, we still do not get enough to really tell their stories. It’s just a series of moments in their lives with no sense of how we got there or who these people are, and it’s up to the performers to sell it on their own. As I’ve already said, Bondarchuk is a pretty lousy Pierre. He is far too old for the role and he doesn’t have the range to sell Pierre’s internal crises that forms half the story’s philosophy. Pierre is the heart of the story, and without him it is almost impossible for anything else to work. Vyacheslav Tikhonov is an acceptable Bolkonsky, but his character is perhaps the most underwritten of the three and his psychological and moral shifts throughout the tale are more or less ignored. That being said, he is still able to sell the film’s best moment, perhaps my single favorite moment in all of literature, which is when the wounded Andrei sees his hated romantic rival Dolokhov dying next to him after a battle and suddenly releases his years of hatred and resentment. Of the three, Ludmila Savelyeva’s Natasha easily comes off as the best. She is able to express the giant range of emotions required of the character without ever coming across as histrionic. The utter joy and infinite sadness that Natasha must go through are all spelled out perfectly across her face in an utterly bravura performance.
I do not want to come off like I hated every aspect of the film. If I had, there is no way I would have forced myself to sit through eight hours. I have not seen his other films, but Bondarchuk is clearly a capable filmmaker, even if he was in a bit over his head (the movie took nearly six years to make and they went through dozens of crew members as people kept quitting). The battle scenes may lack in emotional depth, but I’ll be damned if any Hollywood epic from the time could match them in terms of sheer impressive scope. Given the full use of the Soviet army, Bondarchuk crafted marches and formations unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The burning of Moscow, seen through the eyes of Pierre as he runs through the ashen great city, is as compelling a sequence of cinema as you will ever see. Perhaps not coincidentally, this sequence is also Bondarchuk’s greatest moment as an actor, a place where the physicality of his performance overwhelms any other issues with his character. The various dances are gorgeous, with the camera sliding through and over the crowds as they celebrate their brief times of peace. Bondarchuk’s camera is very subjective, often experimenting with a variety of different techniques (split screen, long tracking shots, inserts, dueling narration and more) to usually successful results. At best, these moments recall this movie’s infinitely superior cousin, Andrei Rublev.
French soldiers execute Russian prisoners after the burning of Moscow
I actually waited on watching War And Peace until this week because I knew that I would be seeing Rublev in theaters last Saturday, and I wanted the best possible comparison. The two epics make for interesting companions. They show the violent birth and death of Russia’s early modern era. One takes place as Russia began to consolidate into one nation and fight off its Tartar invaders, and the other shows the moment where Russia defeated Napoleon and became a part of Europe. They both deal with questions of faith in times of turmoil, although of course the Tarkovsky film does so with far more depth and subtlety. Visually, War and Peace is probably the more experimental film, often bringing to mind the work of Sergei Pajanarov or even Tarkovsky’s greatest student, Alexander Sokurov, and this why it is still possibly worth watching. Unfortunately, this is also where the issues with the film stock would seem to come into play. This really could have been one of the most beautiful films ever made, but instead half the shots are faded and unclear and the colors are kind of a mess. The fact that the camera is clearly doing the right things all along makes these issues so much more frustrating.
I’m still not entirely sure what I should make of this movie. There are moments of virtuoso filmmaking that are unlike anything I have ever seen, but these are few and far between. The scatter-shot narrative cannot possibly work for someone unfamiliar with the books. Many of the actors are miscast, but at least occasionally effective. The score is occasionally perfect, often slipping into ambient noise that fits the chaos perfectly, but otherwise it is obvious and manipulative. The scope is massive, but still too small. It runs eight hours and covers most of the story, but somehow fails to scratch the surface of the heart, mind and soul of the novel. All of these little contradictions render this film as little more than a frustrating curiosity, something that fans of the novel should probably check out for the sake of curiosity, but also something that is sure to disappoint them in the end.
An Excess Of Cinema 