For a director, one of the most impossible tasks imaginable is trying to adapt Leo Tolstoy's titanic 1000+ page novel for the big screen, and to do it well is even more difficult. However, director Sergey Bondarchuk has succeeded in this near impossible task, as despite the obvious fact that no movie can be as great or complex as Tolstoy's novel, this 7 hour epic barely suffers from any such point.
I do not believe that comparing the quality of a movie to that of its novel is a very relevant point, as every film stands alone as just that, a film. But if one tries to remain faithful to the source material, there is a chance some things get hushed up which might result in certain scenes not quite fitting in anymore. Of course, significant part of the stories of Nikolai Rostov, Boris Drubetskoy & Denisov (Nikolai was kind of like a 4th main character in the novel) for example were left out of the film, yet this is made up for quite smoothly by really only focussing on the development of Andrei, Pierre & Natasha. Everything else might be barely developed, but it plays out in such a way as to develop our three main characters consistently. Thus, Bondarchuk has succeeded in narrowing down the plot to a 7 hour movie, and still maintains the essential continuity of character development in these three characters, and never does he really show that it is about the development of someone else.
Much lauded, the technical aspects of War & Peace are all superb. It is definitely one of the most visually astounding pictures ever made. It is also said to be one of the most expensive movies ever made, utilizing thousands of extra's and endless beautiful aristocratic art design. With the red army being called in to supply a lot of the roles of extra's, it is as if almost the entire Russian nation was involved into making this impossible titanic film. Battle sequences are just about unparalleled, especially during the battle of Borodino. The complex shots of thousands of extra's in sequence in marching scenes, the reflective helicopter aerial shots of death and destruction in the battlefield, the many steadicam shots watching the marching, changing distances and overviews effortlessly without editing. The many scenes of aristocratic society, the beautiful balls, costumes, cathedrals. There is also an incredible one-take shot of a ball sequence where the camera steadicams from the opening towards a certain door and back, ending perfectly symmetrical, that is just an epitome of the directorial smoothness this picture consists of. It is so exquisitely shot that nearly every frame is material for a beautiful painting, and it comes as no surprise that Kubrick was highly influenced by these visuals for his masterpiece Barry Lyndon.
The acting is also superb in this rendition of War & Peace, especially Lyudmila Saveleva as Natasha. She perfectly embodies the vivaciousness, innocence, happiness, artlessness & naivety of Tolstoy's character, as if she just walked out of the novel into the screen. Bondarchuk, casting himself as Pierre Bezukhov, also has this merit, as he perfectly displays the clumsy, idealistic, kind-hearted & absent minded nature of the Pierre in the novel. And to top it off, the strict and stoic demeanor of Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Andrei Bolkonsky also perfectly embodies Tolstoy's character spirit. Of course, accuracy to the novel in these terms is not required to create a superb movie, but when the movie is as faithful to the novel as this one, it would not make a lot of sense to have your characters utilize traits they should never have had. In any case, these characters feel just as alive as they are in Tolstoy's novel.
The dialogue, well adapted from the source material, is psychologically & philosophically superb, although of course a lot of those credits go to Tolstoy, but the narrative implementation of psychological happenings in the minds of our three main characters is a brilliant addition to add as much scope as possible to a film that already has a scale that is nearly unequaled. A lot of people complain that in Bondarchuk's next film Waterloo (1970) there was much scale and little scope, but this is not the case for War & Peace, as it is both substantial in terms of character, and gigantic in terms of scale. The score is also excellent, and often used effectively as a reflective measure near the end of battles, or beautifully during balls. It is varied, it is epic and it is beautiful at the same time.
It would be a hard task to distinguish what aspect of War & Peace isn't great, and due to its incredible complexity largely owed to a 7-hour runtime, there's very little movies that can possibly equal the pure raw incredible power of will that was needed to create such a giant production, not to mention the personal poignancy also evident in its main characters. Thus, despite the fact that this film is not widely known due to various reasons, there is little doubt as to its status of an all-time great among motion pictures.
I do not believe that comparing the quality of a movie to that of its novel is a very relevant point, as every film stands alone as just that, a film. But if one tries to remain faithful to the source material, there is a chance some things get hushed up which might result in certain scenes not quite fitting in anymore. Of course, significant part of the stories of Nikolai Rostov, Boris Drubetskoy & Denisov (Nikolai was kind of like a 4th main character in the novel) for example were left out of the film, yet this is made up for quite smoothly by really only focussing on the development of Andrei, Pierre & Natasha. Everything else might be barely developed, but it plays out in such a way as to develop our three main characters consistently. Thus, Bondarchuk has succeeded in narrowing down the plot to a 7 hour movie, and still maintains the essential continuity of character development in these three characters, and never does he really show that it is about the development of someone else.
Much lauded, the technical aspects of War & Peace are all superb. It is definitely one of the most visually astounding pictures ever made. It is also said to be one of the most expensive movies ever made, utilizing thousands of extra's and endless beautiful aristocratic art design. With the red army being called in to supply a lot of the roles of extra's, it is as if almost the entire Russian nation was involved into making this impossible titanic film. Battle sequences are just about unparalleled, especially during the battle of Borodino. The complex shots of thousands of extra's in sequence in marching scenes, the reflective helicopter aerial shots of death and destruction in the battlefield, the many steadicam shots watching the marching, changing distances and overviews effortlessly without editing. The many scenes of aristocratic society, the beautiful balls, costumes, cathedrals. There is also an incredible one-take shot of a ball sequence where the camera steadicams from the opening towards a certain door and back, ending perfectly symmetrical, that is just an epitome of the directorial smoothness this picture consists of. It is so exquisitely shot that nearly every frame is material for a beautiful painting, and it comes as no surprise that Kubrick was highly influenced by these visuals for his masterpiece Barry Lyndon.
The acting is also superb in this rendition of War & Peace, especially Lyudmila Saveleva as Natasha. She perfectly embodies the vivaciousness, innocence, happiness, artlessness & naivety of Tolstoy's character, as if she just walked out of the novel into the screen. Bondarchuk, casting himself as Pierre Bezukhov, also has this merit, as he perfectly displays the clumsy, idealistic, kind-hearted & absent minded nature of the Pierre in the novel. And to top it off, the strict and stoic demeanor of Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Andrei Bolkonsky also perfectly embodies Tolstoy's character spirit. Of course, accuracy to the novel in these terms is not required to create a superb movie, but when the movie is as faithful to the novel as this one, it would not make a lot of sense to have your characters utilize traits they should never have had. In any case, these characters feel just as alive as they are in Tolstoy's novel.
The dialogue, well adapted from the source material, is psychologically & philosophically superb, although of course a lot of those credits go to Tolstoy, but the narrative implementation of psychological happenings in the minds of our three main characters is a brilliant addition to add as much scope as possible to a film that already has a scale that is nearly unequaled. A lot of people complain that in Bondarchuk's next film Waterloo (1970) there was much scale and little scope, but this is not the case for War & Peace, as it is both substantial in terms of character, and gigantic in terms of scale. The score is also excellent, and often used effectively as a reflective measure near the end of battles, or beautifully during balls. It is varied, it is epic and it is beautiful at the same time.
It would be a hard task to distinguish what aspect of War & Peace isn't great, and due to its incredible complexity largely owed to a 7-hour runtime, there's very little movies that can possibly equal the pure raw incredible power of will that was needed to create such a giant production, not to mention the personal poignancy also evident in its main characters. Thus, despite the fact that this film is not widely known due to various reasons, there is little doubt as to its status of an all-time great among motion pictures.