Since I haven't seen the recent BBC version of War and Peace and, considering I have seen all the other major productions of the novel and it is a little silly to have a War and Peace blog and not at least comment on the recent series, I decided to watch and make a post for each episode. I don't want to just list the differences, etc., or even give anything that might look like a formal review or summary. Instead, I'll discuss some things that I find worth talking about.
The first thing you notice is the Weinstein logo, which is not only quite unfortunate, but lead to a search and discovery that the company still exists and produces movies and shows. The episode opens with some ominous chanting, which is also played during the death of Count Bezukhov. The show begins with a pull back to Napoleon, who doesn't appear in the episode (following the book's depiction of the events in the episode), on a horse as an opening shot from the back, with a focus on the war and how it will change the lives of the Russian people in the text crawl.
The party and Andrei/Pierre's private discussion that also includes his wife takes place during the day, which I found to be a really weird choice. Overall, I really like Paul Dano as an actor (especially in movies like Love & Mercy, 12 Years a Slave, and There Will Be Blood) but he seems a little stilted and his awkwardness is a little modern and forced. He also isn't able to portray Pierre's size, which feeds into the artificial awkwardness. Anna Pavlovna (I didn't realize while watching that it is Gillian Anderson of The X-Files) is quite pretty and looks a little young, though she is technically only forty years old in the book. In the opening conversation, there is an added line that isn't in the book but I think is very good and summarizes the conservative patriotic Catherine-esque Russian sect: "Russia hasn't lost a war in a hundred years". I really like the long shot that circles around and introduces us to the characters and gives a scale to the party as a whole. Unlike the book, Boris is here at the party, and I think this helps introduce his character. Helene is skinny and less busty than one would imagine. Vassily is much meaner to Boris and his mother than the novel. He appears to be a little more explicitly evil and cunning in this. Pierre makes the point that Russia can't speak its own language explicitly. The revolution language is much more explicit in this conversation as well, which I think are good additions.
Pierre's decision to join the Anatole party, going back on his word, is made less through the laissez-faire way it seems to me in the novel, but with explicit intercuts as he is walking, making him make the decision. The window ledge scene, one of the early iconic scenes of the novel (and a scene the King Vidor version did beautifully), is notably cut. Helene and Pierre have an extra conversation after he is scolded by Vassily. The bear scene is shown in pieces by a flashback as Pierre rides to Moscow, neither of which are dramatized in the book. There's a weird scene where he talks to pigs, coming to the backway and repeating that it is Natasha's nameday. It was probably the worst addition and seemed like filler or an attempt to slow the pace down, something the novel doesn't need.
A problem when adapting War and Peace is the age of the actors, as the Rostovs are supposed to be young teenagers at the beginning, which is impossible to do and have the same actors play throughout (at least Petya starts off very young here, as I think you have to do) without doing the Boyhood method. What this does is make the Rostovs introduction less childish but inherently more silly because the scenes are written for children (there is no doll here obviously and in the old BBC version, the doll scene is very strange because the actress was 30 years old at the time of filming). Natasha's (Lily James was about 26 or 27 when this was made) terrible eyebrows help (I say that now, hoping it will change with the production). What this does do is make the Boris kiss a little more serious, though this is extremely brief here.
I really like how they casted Catiche as older (she was about 47 when it was made) and played the scene with her and Vassily (they took out the dog, which seems to make it more serious, especially with the very golden candle-light). I also like the physicality of the acting of Andrei, as he is very stiff, formal, and his facial expressions showing his contempt, matched by the dialogue of his wife, but his love for his sister. The casting of the "plain" Marya works as well (it is hard to talk about women's looks, so I won't dwell on the point. Sonya isn't too beautiful either.). The casting of Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky is always important and I think really shows how the production understands the tone of the novel. Here, the actor (Jim Broadbent) is recognizable, but he seems to be playing a bit too dementia-like, more confused than harsh and I didn't like the scene of the two talking before Andrei left. The production also cuts one of my favorite jokes of the novel, where Andrei claims he will only wear the necklace if it doesn't break his neck, instead playing the scene more tender (Count Bezukhov's death is played with almost no awkward comedy as well).
We get to Kutuzov and Andrei in Austria before the end of the episode, with the Unfortunate General Mack immediately popping up when we get to the War section. All the comedy, and this appears to be a running theme, is cut from the scene as the series isn't interested in trying to play up the absurdist humor of Tolstoy. It was an interesting decision to introduce Prince Bagration, whom I don't really consider an important dramatic character in the novel for adaptation sake (he isn't in the 2007 adaptation for example), who speaks in very deep guttural tones. I want to see how Kutuzov is portrayed in the rest of the series. We got a couple of scenes with here and he is serious and a little hardened. The chanting reappears in the battle scene and the violence is fairly visceral without being over the top. Nikolai's pain in the battle is treated as serious and his confusion real, with tension appearing as he recognizes the French and throws his gun at them, even having bullets bounce all around him and screaming at his own soldiers pathetically. The episode ends with Andrei arriving to the cannons and deciding to stay with Tushin. This is of course something that is going to happen a lot, but this seemed to happen very quickly and it was hard to see Andrei's decision turn here.
Definitely, and the casting of course makes sense with this, a Pierre-centric adaptation, though this is true obviously of the Soviet version, which can be attributed, at least in part, to the director also playing Pierre (Anthony Hopkins is also the biggest actor to come out of the first BBC adaptation and Henry Fonda/Audrey Hepburn dominate the King Vidor adaptation). Overall, you can see that I liked some of the decisions in the first episode and disliked some of them. The production value is solid, though you can see the limitations (nothing can possibly match the scale of the Soviet version). I have to say that I'm interested in seeing the rest of the series, which shows that the series has at least some value.
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