The BBC’s “War and Peace” is more Austen than Tolstoy

By L.K.

LEO TOLSTOY aspired to “grasp the seemingly ungraspable” parts of life when he wrote “War and Peace”. Andrew Davies, who wrote the script for the BBC’s latest adaptation of the celebrated Russian novel, told the Radio Times that he aspired only to “copy out the best bits”. He also added some intimate moments of his own. One already-infamous scene in the first episode overtly depicts an incestuous relationship between the mischievous Kuragin siblings, Anatole and Hélène—something that Tolstoy only obliquely alluded to. Mr Davies’s strategy has had some success, bringing headlines and viewers (the series is now airing simultaneously on BBC, A&E, Lifetime, and the History Channel). Yet he has carved up Tolstoy’s masterpiece in such a way that it has become an emotionally blunt story, far more “peace” than “war”.

Mr Davies is the master of the “bonnet drama”, best known for his 1995 rendering of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. Since then, he has barely modified his approach, calling Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (James Norton) the “New Darcy” and comparing the prince’s relationship with Natasha Rostov (Lily James) to Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet’s love affair. Conveniently, Ms James plays Elizabeth Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", now in theatres. Mr Davies's creative additions to Austen’s text ignited a world of “Austen erotica” and, twenty years later, the series has “almost usurped the original novel in the minds of the public,” says Professor Deborah Cartmell, an Austen scholar.

One hopes the same won’t be said of “War and Peace” in 2036. The series is helplessly English, as several Russian and British critics have pointed out. But that is hardly its worst offence. Mr Davies boasted to the Telegraph that adapting the tome into a neat six-hour script was “dead easy”, and that the key to getting it down to size was “leaving out all the editorialising, the history and the philosophy and trying to incorporate it somehow into the drama”. The problem is that the bulky “editorialising” is what shapes the love and sex at the centre of “War and Peace”. Natasha’s love for Andrei winds itself through the ballrooms of Moscow and the trenches of the battlefield, where it is transfused with Andrei’s love for his fellow soldier. “You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love,” Andrei remarks on his deathbed.

The novel’s emotional complexity is lost on screen as, for the majority of the series, the war scenes are condensed into a few brief segments so that the camera can quickly return to the dazzling imperial sets of peace. There are fewer enemies to love and mourn. Despite the latest episode’s dramatic staging of the Battle of Borodino, the result of the series’ cursory approach to war is that in the drawing rooms of Moscow, feeling falls flat. Andrei’s proposal to Natasha is, in the novel, a tremendous moment of solemnity. “Prince Andrei held her hand, looked into her eyes, and did not find the former love for her in his soul…The actual feeling, though not as bright and poetic as the former one, was more serious and strong,” Tolstoy writes. Sergei Bondarchuk’s eight-hour version of the novel, produced from 1961 to 1967, captures all the import of this moment in a voiceover quoting the text, which his Prince Andrei (Vyacheslav Tikhonov) duly acts out. Mr Davies, who told the Moscow Times that he had deliberately avoided the acclaimed Bondarchuk rendering for fear it would depress him, allows Mr Norton and Ms James to gloss over the moment with nervous smiles and half-hearted sighs.

This is the BBC’s second reimagining of the Tolstoy epic, and has been welcomed as a much-needed reminder of the lessons “War and Peace” can offer in our troubled time. Both the British and Russian governments helped bring the series to life, an increasingly rare display of diplomatic co-operation between the two countries. The actors filmed the series on location in Latvia, Lithuania, and St. Petersburg. It was an uneasy time; the Ukraine conflict was ongoing and Russia’s Baltic neighbours were on edge. War should have been at the front of their minds, yet that does not come through in this shallow portrayal.

Then again, celebrating life’s easier pleasures like hunting, balls, and matchmaking is a natural impulse in times of war. “At the approach of danger…it is better to turn away from the painful things until they come and think about what is pleasant,” Tolstoy wrote. As Napoleon’s army advanced toward the city, “that is what now happened with the citizens of Moscow. It was long since there had been so much merrymaking in Moscow as there was that year.” Perhaps the scriptwriters and cast simply took that message too much to heart.