War and Peace [USSR 1968]

Война и мир
Director: S. Bondarchuk
Cinematographers: A. Petritsky, A. Shelenkov

This adaptation of Tolstoy's novel is not only huge in length, but also in depth and breadth of its subject matter and style. Given the material of the novel, it would presumably have been possible to create a stylistically uninteresting vehicle for the book; but instead, Bondarchuk creates a film worthy of the book on which it is based. Moreover, while it stays true to the classic, the film clearly seems to ring at times with an analogy to the events of the 20th century.

A first thing to note is the length of the film. Obviously the decision to make a seven hour long film, which took seven years to film, cannot have been taken lightly. But the length does not appear to have been some kind of gratuitous gesture; every part of the film seems genuinely devoted to developing the complexities of the various characters and developing observations about the place of human life. There are certainly plenty of unhurried sequences, but at no time can it be said that this film simply drags on unnecessarily.

On the contrary, there are many moments of well-created tension, and an unusually wide range of emotion is evoked. And while an eclectic combination of camera techniques is employed, the basic style of the film stays tightly woven throughout. That is, whether in the peacetime soirées of the aristocracy or on the battlefield, the camera is generally caught up in a dizzying, swerving, throbbing, dancing mass of people, never forgetting to occasionally pause to show the plight of one particular person among the throng, but always reminding us of both the insignificance and the preciousness of each of those people. Somehow the entire thing comes together in the visions of a dying Bolkonsky toward the end, where we see marching ranks of soldiers and aristocrats together, marching and marching endlessly.

This is of course a message that comes through strongly from Tolstoy. We are made to laugh at the pettiness, the self-love and self-pity of so many characters, but then to be reminded that although life is absurd, it is also beautiful for its own sake. Somehow the individual is mocked and ridiculed while being simultaneously shown as precious. All notions of romantic nobility are torn away; but the fragile person that remains is worth valuing.

Of course, Bondarchuk had to choose exactly what aspects he wanted to emphasise, and therefore it seems undeniable that certain bits of Tolstoy's ideas and spirit are caught more than others. In particular, the film comes across as strongly anti-war, in the spirit of the USSR of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In spite of Napoleon's association with the French revolution, there is an obvious analogy between the Napoleonic invasion and the fascist invasion of Russia, which seems to float to the top more than once, in such comments as that the Russian soldiers feel as if they would like to take no prisoners because the French have killed their families, burned their homes, etc. But the Russian soldiers take pity on the French in the end, and throughout the film there is a strong emphasis on the horrors of war, the suffering of the individual in the huge mass of battle, the suffering of families of the dead. Those who romanticise war, particularly the young, are shown tragically its true face--one boy character even being reminiscent of the protagonist in Klimov's later film 'Come and See'. The point being, not only does there seem to be a clear analogy between this war and the anti-fascist war, but there is also an analogy about the horrors of war, the need to live life for its own sake and in peace, a need which seems to have been so present in the post-war USSR.

There are a couple of other messages Bondarchuk may have particularly extracted or emphasised. One is the treatment of the old aristocracy. At times, particularly with Kutuzov, one gets a similar impression about the depiction of the aristocracy as one gets from Klimov's Agony--that is, a class of people totally disconnected from the fact they are causing the deaths of tens of thousands of their own people, riddled with superstition, arbitrary in their decision-making, and totally debauched. There certainly seems to be some implicit condemnation of the old order, though of course as the story is from the point of view of an aristocrat, that aspect does not take centre stage. But it does seem present.

Also part of this is the way in which young aristocratic female characters like Natasha Rostova are undeveloped by their very position, in the same way as Katerina Izmailova in Shostakovich's opera. Of course, that particular point cannot really be a creative decision by Bondarchuk because it is integral to the story.

Another point is the comment made by Bezukhov both at the beginning and end of the film, that there is really only one simple philosophy he subscribes to: that so long as evil men band together, honest and good men must band together too. An interesting point to emphasise, given that the focus of the film generally seems to be much more existential, philosophical, psychological, and personal than in any way genuinely political. But perhaps the political dimension of it is linked to the political dimension of the pacifist message. For if the point is really that life has to be lived for its own sake, that it is not worth slaughtering each other for forces beyond our own control, then maybe there is a point that we must band together to stop people trying to bring us down to these lows. Naturally, a way of interpreting this is that peace-loving people who do not see a need for war must band together to stop those who do. The message in itself may be no different to the straightforward pacifism of films like The Cranes Are Flying, but the psychological and philosophical background behind the statement is here far more deeply and broadly fleshed out.

This is overall a highly impressive movie. It is not a 'reinterpretation' of Tolstoy that goes against his spirit, but it is equally not an empty vehicle for some sort of blind reading of the original text. Instead, it is constructed for the cinematic medium and the way in which it is done makes a clear analogy to the more recent experience of the Soviet people, in a way which both connects with more recent concerns and makes the original points all the more poignant. The genius of the style as well as the content is the way in which it plays with the human condition in general--the individual, the mass, the connection between the two, and all the while, watching in the background, the silence and patience of eternal nature.