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What’s surprising isn’t just how good this 'War and Peace' is—for A&E, the miniseries is a stirring return to form—but how resonant Tolstoy’s themes are today. A tale of love and coming-of-age under threat of total, apocalyptic war, the novel has a reputation of being difficult and morose. It is long: 1,400 pages. Those unfamiliar with Russian classics need know only that 'War and Peace' is the one with Napoleon (the Big Bad) and Natasha (the girl everyone loves).
'War and Peace is the work of genius, equal to everything that the Russian literature has produced before', he pronounced in the first, smaller essay. 'It is now quite clear that from 1868 when the War and Peace was published the very essence of what we call Russian literature has become quite different, acquired the new form and meaning', the. War and Peace is more than a novel. It’s a reflection of Leo Tolstoy’s strongly held beliefs – a philosophical tract, not just about politics, war, love, marriage and property, but about. A tale of love and coming-of-age under threat of total, apocalyptic war, the novel has a reputation of being difficult and morose. It is long: 1,400 pages. Those unfamiliar with Russian classics need know only that 'War and Peace' is the one with Napoleon (the Big Bad) and Natasha (the girl everyone loves).
Director Tom Harper ('Peaky Blinders') has never made anything on this scale, but then, neither has anyone else, unless they’ve made a previous version of 'War and Peace.' Or if they’re Napoleon, waging the Napoleonic wars. A Russian film adaptation from 1966 is said to be the best, and Anthony Hopkins, in 1972, was a charmingly diffident leading man for the BBC version.
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Though a Russian film adaptation from 1966 is said to be superior, with a cast of thousands, this new version has a cast of (virtual) tens of thousands—all of whom seem to be realistically present on the battlefield. Harper has an impressive handle in these battle sequences, epic clashes between Napoleon’s forces and the Russian Army at Austerlitz and Borodino. With a sweeping overhead shot of a dispatch rider galloping from one end of the Russian line to the cavalry, hidden in the treeline, Harper gives a sense of both the vastness of the battle, and the many smaller dramas about to take place within the chaos.
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More masterly, though, is the way the miniseries captures the story’s complicated social hierarchy, where political favors exist. Take the first episode’s dizzying opening scene, set at a St. Petersburg soiree, which introduces nearly all the major characters within four and a half minutes. The party, presided over by society hostess Anna (Gillian Anderson, wry) and a political fixer (Stephen Rea, sly) attracts the city’s elite, and one awkward newcomer: Pierre (Paul Dano), the “natural” or illegitimate son of an elderly unmarried nobleman. As the story begins, Pierre’s a bookish idealist, complete with nerd glasses. Pierre’s a fan of liberte, egalite, fraternite, and Napoleon, though it’s not clear if he knows that Napoleon has declared himself Emperor, with a plan to rule Europe. Dano overplays Pierre’s hayseed manners and schoolmaster squint, early on, but with sheer sincerity becomes an endearing hero.