War and peace review paul dano biography
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‘War and Peace’: a visually breathtaking and concise adaptation of Tolstoy’s masterpiece
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The BBC certainly didn’t lack ambition when they decided to take on Tolstoy’s colossal masterpiece. Whenever anyone tries to transfer a classic from the page to the screen, they always run the risk of cutting out too much and losing the charm of the original, and never more so than with War and Peace. Considering the size of the source material and the multitude of previous adaptations, creating a fresh interpretation was always going to be difficult. In this case, however, I think the risk paid off.
Tolstoy’s epic novel follows the lives of five aristocratic families during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and is widely considered as one of the greatest literary works of all time. I finally got round to reading it during the 2020 lockdown and can confirm that it truly is a magnificent book. Its only drawback is the length – all 1225 pages of it.
For those of you who haven’t got the time or energy to invest in such a hefty tome, the 2016 series of War and Peace condenses Tolstoy’s masterpiece into a much more manageable format that can easily be binge-watched in a day.
While it is true that screenwriter Andrew Davies (perhaps best known for his
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There comes a point in Tolstoy’s War & Peace when Pierre, the bighearted doofus who’s the soul of the novel, joins the Freemasons. He thinks the altruistic, self-sacrificing tenets of this secret society will give some new purpose to his misbegotten existence. He is asked during the induction ceremony—“as a sign of openheartedness”—to reveal his “main predilection” in life.
“Pierre paused, searching,” writes Tolstoy. “‘Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Hot temper? Anger? Women?’ he went through his vices [at this point the reader knows them all too well], weighing them mentally, and did not know which to give preference to. ‘Women,’ Pierre said in a low, barely audible voice.”
This charming scene—which goes on and on in Tolstoy’s characteristically hilarious and long-winded fashion—was one of many from the book that was necessarily left out of Andrew Davies’s lavish new six-part adaptation of War & Peace. The miniseries, produced with the Weinstein Company, is one of the most expensive BBC productions ever, a television event so big that it took three separate channels—Lifetime, History, and A&E—to bring it to the United States (episode one is available online; episode two airs on Monday night at 9:00 p.m.).
Davies has made a name for himself in Britain by
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