War and Peace

A Soviet film in four parts, set in Russia between 1805 and 1812. The narrative follows three people. Pierre is a count's illegitimate son who unexpectedly inherits a great fortune; Andrei is an officer going to war; Natasha is thirteen and growing up. Napoleon is approaching. The army is beaten at Austerlitz and Andrei lies wounded looking at the sky. From there the film moves between drawing rooms and the front. A ball, a duel, an engagement, an attempted elopement and a siege. The Borodino section is the centre. The battle runs for minutes; nothing can be seen for the smoke, the lines become confused, and the camera travels over the field. Moscow burns. The city is emptied, the French come in, and the fire was built at real scale. What the narrative is interested in is not war but an idea of history: the film carries Tolstoy's argument that events are determined not by great men but by countless small decisions. Pierre's line carries that argument. He goes to the battlefield as a civilian in order to understand the war and understands nothing. The scale of the production is extraordinary. Tens of thousands of soldiers from the Soviet army were used in the crowd scenes, separate manufacture was set up for period costume and guns, and the shooting spread over years; the film is counted among the most expensive ever made. The total running time approaches seven hours and it was shown as four separate parts. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Sergei Bondarchuk both directed and played Pierre. Ludmila Savelyeva, Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Sergei Bondarchuk are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes historical cinema at scale and knows the novel. Who it is not for: anyone without patience for the length; the film is not something to watch in one sitting.