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It’s not clear who Pierre is speaking to – the brother or the sister – when he says: “Wherever you are, there is depravity and evil.” But my money is on Helene. I’m convinced her hair is always so elaborate and beautiful because there are snakes growing beneath it. Helene wins.
Audrey Hepburn award for most beautiful lady acting
Aisling Loftus: 'Tolstoy is quite cruel about women'
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A word here for Sonya (Aisling Loftus). This should be a miserable, simpering role to play: a girl who is resented by the family she lives with and who knows that she has little chance of ending up with the man she loves, or, really with any man, because she has no fortune and no outstanding beauty. But Aisling Loftus has brought a lovely, quiet charm to this role. She was instrumental in this episode in showing how unthinkable Natasha’s behaviour was. Let’s shout it loud and proud: no one puts Sonya in the corner.
Russian pedant’s corner
The Russian pedant (for it is I, thinly disguised by a Freemason’s blindfold) has only just emerged from the dunce corner after getting one of the character’s names wrong in this section last week. Even pedants can fail to be sufficiently pedantic sometimes. One thing I will say this week is this: real Russians would not go out in the snow in such flimsy clothes, 19th century or not. Also: the balalaika sing-song in ye olde worlde izba (log house) was a bit too clean for its own good, in both psychological and hygienic terms. Doesn’t anyone ever get their hands dirty in the middle of the Russian countryside?
War and Peace recap: episode five – heroes, leeches and a cast of thousands
Even if the condensing of Tolstoy’s epic is showing up its unbelievable coincidences, this is still glorious telly – from Darcy-esque heroes to wheedling villains and a marvel in the form of Jessie Buckley’s Marya
Viv Groskop
@vivgroskop
Sun 31 Jan 2016 22.00 GMTLast modified on Tue 19 Dec 2017 21.08 GMT
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A proper hero: James Norton as Prince Andrei at the battle of Borodino. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/BBC
‘Strange how things turn out sometimes …’
Pierre! Get away from the battle! You will kill people from the wrong side by stepping on them. I laughed out loud at Pierre attending the scene of the battle of Borodino, barely able to get his boots on and getting in everyone’s way. “I should like to get in the thick of it … Let me know if there’s anything I can do …” Except actually fight, obviously. “Let me carry the munitions! I am strong from copious pie-eating.” I cheered like a self-satisfied hussar with a bellyful of borsch when Anatole’s leg fell off. And I wept like an innocent plum-picking peasant girl when Andrei took hold of what was left of that wolf-like scoundrel’s hand.
War and Peace recap episode four: doom with a view
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With more than half of the novel left to go in only two hours, this episode had a lot of explaining to do. And it did its best to do it, even though the result was rather like dancing the mazurka with Dolokhov: full of highs, lows and every emotion imaginable, and at the end of it you don’t know whether you’re in love, dead or somehow mysteriously pregnant.
My fangirl tendencies towards this series are not dwindling. There’s so much to like. Prince Bolkonsky charging off to war and dropping off his horse before he could get to the end of the driveway. Natasha getting all religious and borrowing Dolokhov’s turban. And let’s not forget the starring role played by the leeches.
However, the problem of length (or, rather, its lack) is messing with the tone a bit. It’s not because they’re having to race through the story. Although it seems that way. No, the problem is this: War and Peace is a novel about forgiveness and the role of fate in our lives. When all the plot points are mushed together like this, the characters don’t seem so much swayed by fate but instead in the grip of the most unlikely coincidences.
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Master of destruction: Matthieu Kassovitz as Napoleon. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/BBC
What’s that? Nikolai Rostov is passing by a country estate and it just happens to be where Princess Marya is? And what’s this? Nikolai has gone to Voronezh and Marya just happens to also be in Voronezh? And I’ll be blowed: Prince Andrei is wounded at Borodino, a battle featuring 250,000 soldiers, and the man in the bed next to him in the infirmary is the one man in the world whom he bears the most rancour? “Fancy seeing you here!”
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This is the huge difference between a television screenplay and a world where a novelist is in charge. You can get away with these “coincidences” in a novel, especially when there are hundreds of pages separating the inciting incidents. It seems more clumsy on screen. If things seem to jar a little, blame Tolstoy, because he’s just a bit too didactic sometimes: “See how important it is to believe in God and show forgiveness to your fellow man!” And blame the BBC budgets for not stretching to an extra couple of hours to cover this up a bit better.
But still, all this is chepukha (inconsequential nonsense) next to the scale and feel of this glorious, praiseworthy production. You want war? We’ll give you war. On an epic scale and with blood and gore and thousands of Baltic extras (these scenes were filmed in Latvia and Lithuania). Best bits? The scenes between Natasha and Pierre. Napoleon tugging Boris’s ear and Boris being really not very sure about it at all. And Helene’s new beau being really not very sure at all that he wants to marry her. Sensible man. Ah, how I’ll miss them all. Please, nice Mr Weinstein, give us some more money so that it can go on longer?
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Runner-up for Darcy of the week: Fedor Dolokhov (Tom Burke). Photograph: Mitch Jenkins/BBC
Those all-important Mr Darcy moments
I know some will consider me an enfeebled, tuberculosis-ridden female, but this episode belonged to Prince Andrei. He’s a proper hero. Let’s not forget that this is the man Tolstoy wished he could be, although Tolstoy knows that he is like Pierre. Andrei is the ur-man: brave, bold, noble, self-sacrificing. Yes, he is a bit of an idiot for not forgiving Natasha. But we’re all human.