Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is a masterful magnum opus, with a riveting if very long story with many themes, interesting sense of history and very memorable characters brilliantly written. But because of the book's mammoth length, incredibly rich detail and the many characters that need a lot of development despite being one the greatest novels ever written it's also one of the hardest to adapt, word for word and detail for detail being almost impossible when adapted.
Of the major versions, the best version is the 1972 mini-series with Anthony Hopkins, not only an ideal adaptation of the book and as faithful as one could get but also brilliant in its own right, one of the best the BBC ever produced. The 1966 Russian one directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, while not as accessible, is a close second, a towering achievement and contains the best battle and ballroom scenes of all the War and Peace adaptations. The 1956 King Vidor film has a number of good things, like the production values, the music score, Audrey Hepburn and some of the supporting cast but the sound quality and two male leads are very problematic and the story is not as riveting as it could have been. Any version of War and Peace does deserve a pat on the back for even attempting to adapt the work, and although this 2007 mini-series was underwhelming and my least favourite of the adaptations it is not exempted from that.
The mini-series does have a fair number of virtues, first and foremost the exquisite production values, the amount of detail in the lavish décor and settings is jaw-droppings, the costumes are rich in colour and detail and the whole mini-series is beautifully photographed, especially in the ballroom scenes. The music score positively soars with elegant lushness, the ballroom scenes are gorgeously romantic (though the Bordachuk version's ballroom scenes still has the ones here beat) and there are some impressive supporting turns. Ken Dukan is deliciously serpentine as Anatoli, Benjamin Sadler is appropriately roguish as Dolokhov, Malcolm MacDowell makes for a chillingly arresting Bollonsky, Violante Placido's Helene is delightfully wicked and played with relish and Brenda Blethyn is marvellous. Vladimir Ilin is a very memorably forthright Kutuzov.
Clémence Poésy doesn't fare as well, her portrayal of Natasha is the least successful of the four adaptations, the problem is not that she's necessarily physically wrong but more that her performance is both melodramatic and anaemic and the character is written as a spoilt brat with not an awful lot of charm. Alessio Boni is sometimes successful at bringing out Andrei's tragedy, but generally his performance is rather stiff and his chemistry with Poésy rather cold. Alexander Beyer is attractive but rather too dour as Pierre, a character that is quite complex but written too much of an idiot here. Ana Caterina Morariu is also so bland it got irritating, Platon is pretty wasted and this is the War and Peace with the least interesting and one-dimensional Napoleon (the Napoleons of the other adaptations succeeded in bringing the character humanity, but here he's a broadly played caricature which was avoided before).
While War and Peace (2007) looks ravishing, the writing is less so. The script sounded underwritten and awkward, and very rarely delves into the depth of Tolstoy's writing and the points he's trying to make, the events are there but in very condensed and on-the-surface form. The story is written and adapted in a very rushed way and with not much emotional impact or substance at all, melodramatic soap-opera is what it's been described as and that's apt, while of all the adaptations of War and Peace this is the only one where the battle scenes (like the French Army's retreat, powerful in the other three versions but treated in a rushed indifferent fashion here) lack power, intensity or any kind of emotional connection. The CGI did strike me as unnecessary, and while they didn't hinder the scenes that badly they also added little and the quality was only standard, nothing to go wow over.
All in all, definitely worth seeing for anybody considering themselves completests of War and Peace or Tolstoy, but for me it was underwhelming and the weakest version. 5/10 Bethany Cox
Of the major versions, the best version is the 1972 mini-series with Anthony Hopkins, not only an ideal adaptation of the book and as faithful as one could get but also brilliant in its own right, one of the best the BBC ever produced. The 1966 Russian one directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, while not as accessible, is a close second, a towering achievement and contains the best battle and ballroom scenes of all the War and Peace adaptations. The 1956 King Vidor film has a number of good things, like the production values, the music score, Audrey Hepburn and some of the supporting cast but the sound quality and two male leads are very problematic and the story is not as riveting as it could have been. Any version of War and Peace does deserve a pat on the back for even attempting to adapt the work, and although this 2007 mini-series was underwhelming and my least favourite of the adaptations it is not exempted from that.
The mini-series does have a fair number of virtues, first and foremost the exquisite production values, the amount of detail in the lavish décor and settings is jaw-droppings, the costumes are rich in colour and detail and the whole mini-series is beautifully photographed, especially in the ballroom scenes. The music score positively soars with elegant lushness, the ballroom scenes are gorgeously romantic (though the Bordachuk version's ballroom scenes still has the ones here beat) and there are some impressive supporting turns. Ken Dukan is deliciously serpentine as Anatoli, Benjamin Sadler is appropriately roguish as Dolokhov, Malcolm MacDowell makes for a chillingly arresting Bollonsky, Violante Placido's Helene is delightfully wicked and played with relish and Brenda Blethyn is marvellous. Vladimir Ilin is a very memorably forthright Kutuzov.
Clémence Poésy doesn't fare as well, her portrayal of Natasha is the least successful of the four adaptations, the problem is not that she's necessarily physically wrong but more that her performance is both melodramatic and anaemic and the character is written as a spoilt brat with not an awful lot of charm. Alessio Boni is sometimes successful at bringing out Andrei's tragedy, but generally his performance is rather stiff and his chemistry with Poésy rather cold. Alexander Beyer is attractive but rather too dour as Pierre, a character that is quite complex but written too much of an idiot here. Ana Caterina Morariu is also so bland it got irritating, Platon is pretty wasted and this is the War and Peace with the least interesting and one-dimensional Napoleon (the Napoleons of the other adaptations succeeded in bringing the character humanity, but here he's a broadly played caricature which was avoided before).
While War and Peace (2007) looks ravishing, the writing is less so. The script sounded underwritten and awkward, and very rarely delves into the depth of Tolstoy's writing and the points he's trying to make, the events are there but in very condensed and on-the-surface form. The story is written and adapted in a very rushed way and with not much emotional impact or substance at all, melodramatic soap-opera is what it's been described as and that's apt, while of all the adaptations of War and Peace this is the only one where the battle scenes (like the French Army's retreat, powerful in the other three versions but treated in a rushed indifferent fashion here) lack power, intensity or any kind of emotional connection. The CGI did strike me as unnecessary, and while they didn't hinder the scenes that badly they also added little and the quality was only standard, nothing to go wow over.
All in all, definitely worth seeing for anybody considering themselves completests of War and Peace or Tolstoy, but for me it was underwhelming and the weakest version. 5/10 Bethany Cox