BBC 2016 War and Peace.
Imagine the dreariness of Russian court life during the Napoleonic wars given a sprucing up with the usual cast of teeny boppers under Tom Harper's direction. Harper seems to take the most nuanced of plots and oversimplify them so that even half drunk harebrained citoyens can grasp the fundamentals (to what extent this blame is shared with Andrew Davies' script adaptation, I can't say). That said, and despite my constant and urgent desire to hit Natassia in the face with a cream pie every time she opens her mouth to utter in the fruitiest of British accents the inanity of the moment, the cast is stellar from among fine BBC and even Canal Plus actors. Natassia and her brother Nikolai are somewhat Disneyfied, and their parents (well cast and played by Adrian Edmondson & Greta Scacchi) seem to be conveying their characters' essences within the limitations of some ersatz direction (the characters in the book are much more complex, with the elder Rostov a kindly but inept money manager whose estates are in serious financial trouble, making his indulgence of his son even more irresponsible and the mother's indulgence of her male children at the expense of the female charges even more inexcusable). There were some reasonable attempts to recreate the ugliness and waste of the state of early 19th c. combat, although I was hoping for some more detailed images of French soldiers and people lugging large cast iron cannons around, but that's just me. I think this comes across as War & Peace LITE, and I lay the responsibility for the failures at the feet of Tom Harper. Still, having read the novel a couple times within the past few years, I was interested to see how this would be adapted. It was fun to see Mathieu Kassovitz of Le Bureau des Légendes as Napoleon. Who better to fill such a role?
The choice of Paul Dano as Pierre Bezukhov is not unreasonable, although Pierre is quite a fat, awkward guy, and Dano is just awkward. Pierre loses weight in the book, later, as an essential part of his character development, and his development in the BBC adaptation really suffers as a result of the compression.
Even the bad guys are given short shrift: Prince Vasily Kuragin, his daughter Helene and son Anatole (two incestuous siblings) are all relentless social climbers who are disappointed not to inherit Count Bezukhov's fortune. No matter, Kuragin manages to manipulate Pierre into marrying his horrible but beautiful daughter. They are no more than cartoon villains. In the book they are much more deliciously bad and plotting. The actors don't have much to work with here but they do come across as regular scoundrels. I seriously question the costumes for Helene as she looks more like a 1920's American flapper than an early 19th c. Russian princess. What's with those weird tiaras? Nobody else in the cast is wearing them either. Gillian Anderson has next to nothing to do in her role as a socialite who hosts aristocrats at her large palace in St. Petersburg. Rebecca Front plays an indomitable mother striving to secure a steady income and position for her son, Boris Drubetskoy. She assists Pierre at the death of his father and thwarts efforts to keep a proper will granting him his full inheritance from being read. So she plays a major role in early episodes. It's just that the whole thing is so anglicized that there's little effort to make this what it is: the great Russian epic.
I was so longing for the parts where Natassia and Nikolai quit being annoying little twits. But now I'm not sure we'll get there. I was amazed to discover that there were only 2 more episodes since we're really only a short way into the book at episode 4. Oh well, that's all the budget we have kids, so wrap it up!
EDIT: It went from bad to worse. Lily James gave Natassia's character all the gravitas she'd breathed into Lady Rose MacClare in Downton Abbey. It's hard to really distinguish the two roles, given further reflection. I guess it's a stroke of good luck that we are fresh out of cream pies.
I recommend that you give this entire production a skip and read the book. It might take longer, but it's so much better than this lite and laffy version.
