War and Peace the novel is so long its length has entered popular culture. So a four part, seven plus hour movie adaptation of it makes sense. But not if you're gonna devote a quarter of it to just one battle. I don't know if the Communist party was responsible for the third part, but it just drags. Yes, it's very real, and I love realism in a movie, but realism is not *sufficient*. The battle sounds superb on paper, certainly *looks* like the costliest battle ever shot, but it's a poorly directed, boring, overlong, confusing mess. The first two parts of this movie were very good: the balls, the duel, some of the soliloquies (the one where Andrei's first wife dies got to me), the scene where Rostova dances in the caretaker's place (also the best scene in the book, by the way). Yes, it's a little dated - everyone seems to act too much with their faces, and the voiceovers tend to be a tad much at times - but it's par for the course. What I minded was the third part bringing this movie down. It recovers somewhat during the fourth, but you realize it's no longer a masterpiece as you'd formerly hoped. Also, Bezukhov (Bondarchuk himself, sadly) is too old and too fat.
Review of War and Peace
