shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2016-01-07 09:39 am
shallowness) wrote2016-01-07 09:39 am
War and Peace - episode one
I belong to that large group of people who haven’t read War and Peace. I read Anna Karenina in my late teens and hated it.
So, I thought I’d watch this canny big-budget adaptation. I say canny, because people who haven’t read the book may well give it a try :) After seeing the first episode, I have mixed feelings despite Andrew ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Davies’s best efforts. With so many characters, I’m still confused about how some characters were connected – I was catching up and clicked on the Rosov(a)s in the Meet the Characters section – and why the back and forth between Moscow and St Petersburg. Also, I didn’t catch all of their names.
The best bits for me were the locations (PALACES!) and interiors that will just have to do until The Musketeers return. At one point, I paused and drooled.
A big problem is that I didn’t really have a character to root for. Natasha at a push, but I don’t love Tolstoy’s women - as depicted here, they’re either grasping or foolish, and though Natasha’s foolishness is down to youth/naivete, there’s an exuberance about it, but I think I’d like Natasha more if she were in another type of story altogether, one where she could break out of being the beloved, cosseted daughter of an upper class Russian family in the early nineteenth century from a novel where the author is Saying Stuff about that society. I did feel a lot of sympathy for Sonya, the poor relation (why did no-one tell her that mustard was a horrid colour? But yay, she was loved anyway) and some for weepy Marya, who seemed to have a good heart. I need for her French companion to be a spy.
But a lot of the men, too, when they weren’t being sexist were driven by greed, and there were a lot of boys who thought war was fine and didn’t realise that Napoleon was a military genius and that guns beat swords, most time. (They spent a lot of that money on the battlefield, although beyond it being noisy carnage, I didn’t get much out of it.) Pierre seems to be the main character, but does he have a spine? No. He seems to be one of Tolstoy’s ditherers (my reaction to ‘Anna Karenina’ can be summarised as ‘Oh, get on with it’). The second main male character, Prince Cheekbones, was deeply unsympathetic in his treatment of his wife and death-wish. Unless if it is revealed she entrapped him into marriage (let the wrong person kiss you or sit next to you at dinner and you might just be engaged in early nineteenth century Russia, apparently), he should have got to know her long enough to realise she was a fool, and she was, but still, not deserving of what came off as callousness, although it seemed from when he was with his father, some of it is acquired repression.
Rebecca Front’s character’s irresistible force was amusing and I thought Aneurin Barnard was ace casting as her son, looks-wise. Gillian Anderson got the best gowns, but the casting, on the whole, was a bit safe, Paul Dano aside. Lily James has played variants on this character before, I’ve seen Tuppence Middleton play a degenerate schemer with an incestuous bent before (but this show proves that she should stick to being a brunette; it makes her features pop out) and I’ve seen Tom Burke play a drunkard before. Even Stephen Rea, who they no doubt cast because he’s good, because he is, is also in the BBC’s Dickensian...apart from a few new younglings and Adrian Edmondson, it is very safe/quality BBC period drama casting. That means you’ve got this sense of familiarity that keeps being jolted by the Russian music reminding us we’re in Russia, so we have less repressed posh people (than if they were English), with a different history and influences, although the same human impulses. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only viewer who doesn’t know what happens next, beyond a revolution in a century’s time.
I just felt distanced, at times, to the point where I was thinking ‘A snarky recap might be fun’, because I kept going ‘Oh, that’s her off Home Fires/An Inspector Calls’ and ‘Oooh, chandeliers’ and ‘What are the servants making of all this?’
I presume Prince Cheekbones will survive, despite his death-wish, and meet Natasha and it looks like there’ll be a triangle with Pierre (Dano is good, lending his usual intensity, but I’m already impatient with the character). I think it’s a good attempt a adapting what must be sprawling material, and watching a society grapple with war, even if we’re still at the young people are naive/fine uniforms won’t save you/champagne on the home front stage, is always going to be compelling. I’ll stick with it, I think, so that I have a slightly better idea of what happens in the novel. It’s prettier than reading a plot summary on Wikipedia.
There could only be one icon!
So, I thought I’d watch this canny big-budget adaptation. I say canny, because people who haven’t read the book may well give it a try :) After seeing the first episode, I have mixed feelings despite Andrew ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Davies’s best efforts. With so many characters, I’m still confused about how some characters were connected – I was catching up and clicked on the Rosov(a)s in the Meet the Characters section – and why the back and forth between Moscow and St Petersburg. Also, I didn’t catch all of their names.
The best bits for me were the locations (PALACES!) and interiors that will just have to do until The Musketeers return. At one point, I paused and drooled.
A big problem is that I didn’t really have a character to root for. Natasha at a push, but I don’t love Tolstoy’s women - as depicted here, they’re either grasping or foolish, and though Natasha’s foolishness is down to youth/naivete, there’s an exuberance about it, but I think I’d like Natasha more if she were in another type of story altogether, one where she could break out of being the beloved, cosseted daughter of an upper class Russian family in the early nineteenth century from a novel where the author is Saying Stuff about that society. I did feel a lot of sympathy for Sonya, the poor relation (why did no-one tell her that mustard was a horrid colour? But yay, she was loved anyway) and some for weepy Marya, who seemed to have a good heart. I need for her French companion to be a spy.
But a lot of the men, too, when they weren’t being sexist were driven by greed, and there were a lot of boys who thought war was fine and didn’t realise that Napoleon was a military genius and that guns beat swords, most time. (They spent a lot of that money on the battlefield, although beyond it being noisy carnage, I didn’t get much out of it.) Pierre seems to be the main character, but does he have a spine? No. He seems to be one of Tolstoy’s ditherers (my reaction to ‘Anna Karenina’ can be summarised as ‘Oh, get on with it’). The second main male character, Prince Cheekbones, was deeply unsympathetic in his treatment of his wife and death-wish. Unless if it is revealed she entrapped him into marriage (let the wrong person kiss you or sit next to you at dinner and you might just be engaged in early nineteenth century Russia, apparently), he should have got to know her long enough to realise she was a fool, and she was, but still, not deserving of what came off as callousness, although it seemed from when he was with his father, some of it is acquired repression.
Rebecca Front’s character’s irresistible force was amusing and I thought Aneurin Barnard was ace casting as her son, looks-wise. Gillian Anderson got the best gowns, but the casting, on the whole, was a bit safe, Paul Dano aside. Lily James has played variants on this character before, I’ve seen Tuppence Middleton play a degenerate schemer with an incestuous bent before (but this show proves that she should stick to being a brunette; it makes her features pop out) and I’ve seen Tom Burke play a drunkard before. Even Stephen Rea, who they no doubt cast because he’s good, because he is, is also in the BBC’s Dickensian...apart from a few new younglings and Adrian Edmondson, it is very safe/quality BBC period drama casting. That means you’ve got this sense of familiarity that keeps being jolted by the Russian music reminding us we’re in Russia, so we have less repressed posh people (than if they were English), with a different history and influences, although the same human impulses. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only viewer who doesn’t know what happens next, beyond a revolution in a century’s time.
I just felt distanced, at times, to the point where I was thinking ‘A snarky recap might be fun’, because I kept going ‘Oh, that’s her off Home Fires/An Inspector Calls’ and ‘Oooh, chandeliers’ and ‘What are the servants making of all this?’
I presume Prince Cheekbones will survive, despite his death-wish, and meet Natasha and it looks like there’ll be a triangle with Pierre (Dano is good, lending his usual intensity, but I’m already impatient with the character). I think it’s a good attempt a adapting what must be sprawling material, and watching a society grapple with war, even if we’re still at the young people are naive/fine uniforms won’t save you/champagne on the home front stage, is always going to be compelling. I’ll stick with it, I think, so that I have a slightly better idea of what happens in the novel. It’s prettier than reading a plot summary on Wikipedia.
There could only be one icon!
no subject
So far, none of the character appeal to me as someone to root for and I'm not really impressed with Pierre.
Do you plan to keep the story arc a surprise or will you look up a summary of the novel and see how it ends?
no subject
However, like you say, there are good actors (and good-looking ones) doing their stuff - if I don't remember a character's name or title, I do remember faces. We'll see if the characters start getting more engrossing.
I'm generally a spoilerphobe, so I won't look up what happens, in as much as that's realistic for an adaptation of a novel that's been around for so long! But if I ever did know what happened by osmosis, I've forgotten, and it turns out my historical knowledge is fairly woeful. My speculations were based on the trailers and promotional material for the adaptation.