I've been going all Leo Tolstoy over the past few weeks. I've been watching the BBC's 1970s tv adaptation of Anna Karenina (I'm now up past part 7/10 but I need to re-start my lovefilm account before I get the final dvd) and also I've been sent some parts of the Russian 1960's film adaptation of War and Peace. Now because I knew the latter won the oscar for a 6 hour film I didn't actually realise it was originally released in Russia as 4 individual parts (kind of like The Lord of the Rings trilogy) which is the format lovefilm is sending me the film in. It is though, taking into account inflation, easily the most expensive film ever made ($100m in the mid '60s is well over half a billion dollars nowadays).
I've seen the first 2 parts - Andrey Bolkonskiy and Natasha Rostova and you can *easily* see how they spent so much money. Both films are ridiculously artistic, brimming with style and grandeur - I just wish I liked them more than I do. There are pieces in each films which are the height of cinematic achievement. There's a 15 minute or so war sequence at the end of Part I which is so unbelievably stylish it's untrue, there's a very long ball sequence at the beginning of Part II which is just pure cinema, it's perfection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDydWwiL630
There is a "but" coming though and I hate that it has to come. Maybe if they cut out an hour and showed it in 2 goes (like the Americans had in the '60s) I'd feel a little different, but it's just not engaging enough. Because there is absolutely no semblance of restraint whatsoever in the film, while that is its major strength in the war/ball scenes and in terms of overall style, it's also its biggest downfall as there is so much opulence it is dragged out to squeeze every possible thing that can be gotten from the project at the expense of dramatic focus.
The first film is well over two hours long and can basically be described in one sentence saying "One guy goes to war then comes back and the other one gets married and fights a duel" and you're really not missing much at all. Also, and while it may seem churlish to criticise it for this given it's a major literary work (which, unlike Anna Karenina, I have not read), as a film it is very predictable. It's still a good film, don't misunderstand me, it's just visual aesthetics can only carry a film so far and while yes it's a visual medium, it's a very flabby film that could be trimmed liberally without losing much of the vision or intent.
Natasha Rostova is better because the ball scene is out of this world, Lyudmila Savelyeva (who I recently saw and liked in a small role in Sunflower) gives the best performance so far by a mile and while also flabby and over-done, it's a tighter narrative than the first part. So the same, but better - better artistry, less overblown but still retains enough of the problems to stop me loving it.
Strangely, even though the BBC probably didn't even spend 1% of what was spent by Russia on War and Peace, I'm enjoying Anna Karenina more. The acting is absolutely first rate, especially Eric Porter as Karenin who is stealing the show. I had my reservations about Pagett but indeed she is acting in a very similar way to how my preference Charlotte Rampling probably would have so I'm enjoying her a lot too (and her best scenes are only to come).
The reason is though that the focus is on the acting and the plot. Now maybe Anna Karenina just has more challenging roles and a better plot, I don't know but even without the visual artistry of Sergei Bondarchuk's remarkable film it's a better told story by the BBC. The Russian epic is just that, epic and what it means is that you have pieces of absolutely unparalleled achievement (which give the films intrinsic value), but they remain that - pieces, like a series of paintings hung next to each other, all of which incredibly ambitious but with only a few of them fulfilling their grandiose potential. Strangely though, despite all of my artistic sensibilities I find myself more drawn to the conclusion of the tv version than the films and that is probably solely down to the BBC doing exactly what they intended and executing it perfectly as opposed to the Russians doing exactly what they intended (which was infinitely more difficult) and only occasionally getting the balance spot on.