War and Peace (1967) review

This mammoth adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's literary masterpiece, which took a few years to complete, is broken up into four pieces for a more 'convenient' viewing experience: in part one, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (Vyacheslav Tikhonov), who's best friends with "illegitimate" Pierre Bezukhov (Bondarchuk), fights with the Imperial Russian Army, gets badly wounded and when he returns home he finds his wife is dying; in section two Andrei falls hopelessly in love with teenager Natasha Rostova (Ludmila Savelyeva) except their marriage is held off for a year and she snuggles up with Anatole Kuragin (Vasily Lanovoy).  For the third film, Napoleon and his soldiers storm into Russia and they have a ferocious (and bloody) confrontation, Andrei is injured once again (after he envisions his own demise) and in the final entry, Moscow is abandoned, Pierre discovers his courage and the French freeze to death trying to make it back to Paris (to most likely gorge on pastries).  There are some untruths that have come out about this production, from its exact budget to the number of extras they hired to lend it "mythic power" - there are also stories involving Bondarchuk having several heart attacks - and while it does contain multiple powerful moments, including Pierre's duel with Fyodor Dolokhov (Oleg Yefremov) and the Russian capital being torched to bits, it's marred by horribly affected "acting" (Savelyeva is a gigantic offender), super fidgety camerawork (not to mention entirely too many "swooping" overhead shots) and becomes more emotionally distant the longer it goes on, losing sight of individual characters in favor of "the spectacle."  A trace amount of Tolstoy's wisdom manages to sneak its way through the billowing smoke, clouds and endless dancing - it's hard to miss his strong Catholic values and vehement anti-war stance - but there's really no substitute for reading the actual text (no matter how long it is).  Two post-viewing thoughts: (1.) the Russian "military strategy" of throwing as many men as possible into armed combat with no regard for their well-being seems to carry on into today (with the invasion of Ukraine) and (2.) I've been to some wild parties in my life ... but none with a drunk bear.