Review: War and Peace (2016)

This is the third version of War and Peace I've tried. The others are the book itself and a sadly boring opera. This is the only one I've finished -- which says more about how short it is than about its quality.

War and Peace is a 2016 miniseries based on the novel of the same name. BBC period dramas are usually good. This is a notable exception.

I recognised several actors:

Lily James (Ella in Cinderella 2015) as Natasha

Tuppence Middleton (Amelia Haversham in Dickensian) as Helene

Stephen Rea (Inspector Bucket in Dickensian) as Vassily

Callum Turner (Theseus in The Crimes of Grindelwald) as Anatole

Kenneth Cranham (Wegg in Our Mutual Friend 1998) as a minor character whose name I can't remember

Gillian Anderson (Lady Dedlock in Bleak House 2005) as Anna

When I gave up on trying to get through the book I wondered why Tolstoy is considered a good author. This series made me wonder even more. From what I've seen he's only notable for writing very long, very boring novels in which nothing ever happens.

Like the book itself the series suffers from a complete inability to decide who the main characters are and what the plot is. One minute the story follows the start of Pierre's disastrous marriage to Helene, the next it's about Napoleon's invasion, and the next everyone's at a party. None of these subplots ever feel like they belong in the same book/series. It's like someone -- either Tolstoy or the director -- tried and failed to imitate Dickens by thinking up as many subplots as possible.

One of the worst things are the costumes. Very few of them bear even the slightest resemblance to what people would actually have worn in the early nineteenth century. That alone makes it clear the series-makers just didn't care. Just as bad is the nudity and incest. I find it very, very hard to believe Tolstoy wrote about either, so for once the blame is entirely on the director/scriptwriter/whoever thought of that.

It wouldn't be so bad if I cared about the characters. Just one sympathetic character would be enough to keep me interested. But all of them are either dull or disgusting, and it was a real struggle to get through the whole series. Honestly I wish I hadn't bothered. It wasn't worth the time or effort.

Is it available online?: Who cares?

Rating: 1/10.

(Not Really a) Review: First Impressions of War and Peace

Now that I have so much time on my hands I'm trying to read this infamously long book. So far it's slooooow going. (You could say that I'm trying, but I'm finding it very trying. *dodges thrown vegetables*)

In spite of being one of the best-known novels ever written, virtually no one knows what War and Peace is about. I'm almost twenty chapters in and I don't know what it's about either. It's supposed to be set during Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia. But the invasion itself hasn't actually started yet. Instead of a wartime epic we're treated to the dull and plodding saga of Pierre Bezukhov, the Rostovs, and Prince Andrei, with guest appearances from some of the least memorable characters I've ever seen. Nothing actually happens in this saga. It's just a collection of conversations and scenes that feel more like a slice of life than an epic novel.

I have to say, it's a struggle to stay interested. It's even more of a struggle to keep track of who's who, who's related to whom, and who has more than one name. (Unfortunately almost everyone has more than one name.)

I'm tempted to either skip ahead to find where the war itself begins, or watch one of the more faithful adaptations and see if it can make the story interesting.

Will I finish the book? Will it become one of the few novels I abandoned in despair? Is it even worth the effort? I'll review it if I do manage to finish it -- something that looks increasingly unlikely. Until then, I'll try to get through a few more chapters.

Review: Anna Karenina (novel)

Some books are classics because they have memorable characters, intriguing plots, and timeless themes. Others, I'm convinced, are considered classics because they are so boring, such a chore to read, and generally just so awful that someone decided reading them made the reader look smart. Guess which category this falls into.

As with Emma, I found many odd cover designs when looking for one to put here. By far the strangest used a picture of Empress Maria Feodorovna, one of the least Anna-like women imaginable. (I can only assume whoever designed it chose an Imperial Russian picture at random, and in the process made themselves a laughing stock for people who know better.)

Anna Karenina (Анна Каренина in Russian) is an 1878 novel by Leo Tolstoy. It's been adapted into dozens of films, series, stage plays, and even a ballet. I really wish I knew what made it so popular. I would have thought it was the sort of book to lapse into obscurity shortly after being published.

I had no interest in this book until I watched that travesty of a film adaptation. Even afterward I wasn't truly interested in it; I just wanted to see how badly the film had butchered it. Verdict: ...actually, the film didn't butcher it too much after all. The book is just as bad.

Now, I know the Cyrillic alphabet and I can muddle through some basic Russian (with the aid of a dictionary). But reading anything as long and complicated as a novel in Russian is completely beyond me. So I have no idea what sort of writer Tolstoy was. I assume he must have been good or he wouldn't be so lastingly popular. But the translation I read was as interesting as watching paint dry.

There were times when I read only a sentence per hour, and could barely remember what the narrator was nattering on about. Eventually I gave up and skim-read the rest of it. Words cannot describe how mind-numbingly, atrociously dreadful this thing is.

Like so many stories (including, I have to admit, some of the ones I've written), Anna Karenina falls into the trap of having no characters for the reader to like or sympathise with. There are maybe four characters who weren't utterly awful: Karenin, Dolly, Levin, and Kitty. The first two were more pitiable than likable, and the last two got on my nerves with the sheer length of time Tolstoy dedicated to their philosophy. A mark of underwhelming writing is when a character exists just to preach the author's own philosophy, and Levin is that sort of character.

 As for Anna herself and Vronsky, I have only one thing to say: ugh. This book is a study in vile, loathsome characters being portrayed as heroes. I can cope with vile, loathsome characters being portrayed as what they are. A story about such characters can actually be fascinating. (Vanity Fair, anyone?) But when we're supposed to see them as the heroes? Double ugh.

Apparently Tolstoy himself regretted writing this book when he finished it. I share his opinion on that, at least. I just wish he'd regretted it a bit sooner. Before he published it, for example.

Is it available online?: On Gutenberg, if for some reason you want to bore yourself to tears.

Rating: 1/10.

Review: Anna Karenina (2012)

On Friday, I (drumroll, please!) finished Camp NaNo. Obviously I decided to celebrate by snarking at a terrible film. My opinion of this film in a nutshell: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA 😆😆😆😆

A quick glance at the plot summary of the novel was enough to convince me I never wanted to read it or watch any adaptations. A look at who directed this adaptation told me all I needed to know about its quality. But I was bored and wanted to watch something I hadn't seen before. So guess what I ended up watching?

Like Pride and Prejudice (2005), which was made by the same *ahem* "director", I laughed all the way through this film. And again, it wasn't supposed to be funny.

They chose to write the title in a colour that blends into the background until it's barely visible. Of course they did. Why would anything about this disaster look like an actual film made by professionals?

Anna Karenina is based on an 1878 novel by Leo Tolstoy. I don't have to read the novel to know this is an atrocious butchering of it.

Several recognisable actors are wasted on it:
Keira Knightley (Elizabeth in Pirates of the Caribbean) as Anna
Matthew Macfadyen (Arthur in Little Dorrit 2008) as Stepan
Jude Law (Watson in Sherlock Holmes 2009) as Karenin
Kelly Macdonald (voice of Merida in Brave) as Darya
Alicia Vikander (Gaby in The Man From U.N.C.L.E 2015) as Kitty
Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux in Star Wars) as Levin
Holliday Grainger (Estella in Great Expectations 2012) as a baroness
Michelle Dockery (Erminia in Return to Cranford) as a princess

For some reason known only to the director's disordered mind, most of the film is set on a stage. A stage in a theatre that appears to have just been struck by a hurricane, no less. If you're like me, this will leave you scratching your head and utterly unable to suspend your disbelief.

We start with some scumbag getting caught in adultery while a weirdo waltzes around reading a letter while her maid dresses her. Yes, you read that last part right. The viewer has no time to process this absurdity before things get even worse. Scene changes aren't done by the traditional method of one scene ending and another one beginning. That would be too normal. Instead backgrounds change, props are lowered onto the stage, and people run around pushing furniture and playing musical instruments.

All of this would be understandable if this was a stage play. But it's a film. Films and stage plays are completely different forms of entertainment and held up to completely different standards. A theatre can get away with extras dragging props around the stage and painted backgrounds representing scenery. A film can't.

Turns out the weirdo is Anna and the scumbag is her brother Stepan/Stiva. She goes off to Moscow to get his wife to forgive him. To forgive him. Not to get her to leave him, as anyone with any brains would under the circumstances. On the train (which is represented by a toy train. I kid you not) Anna meets another scumbag, the mother of the man she'll run away with. Anna's behaviour here is really weird. Who just shoves a picture of their child in a complete stranger's face? 😒

Meanwhile Stepan meets a friend, Levin, who is apparently a farmer but looks more like a tramp. Levin is in love with some girl called Kitty but doesn't think she could love him. Considering how shabby he looks, he's probably right unless he makes an effort to tidy himself up. No self-respecting girl wants to marry a man who looks like he doesn't know what a hairbrush and razor are.

We meet Vronsky, yet another scumbag (who has apparently stolen his hairstyle, mustache and costume from 1937!Rupert of Hentzau, and only succeeds in looking sleazy instead of dashing). Unfortunately, Anna meets him too. The director clearly wants to portray this as "true love". It just makes me despise both of them. The only characters in this film who are at all likeable are Stepan's wife Dolly, Anna's husband Karenin, and her son Seryozha. Everyone else can go die in a fire. Or jump in front of a train.

Poor Dolly gives one of the few non-wooden performances in the film when she says she wants to leave Stepan. Anna convinces her not to leave and says Stepan loves her(!). I vented my feelings about this by yelling at the screen. (Thank goodness no one else was in the house to hear!)

Everything about this film gives the impression the director thought he was filming a stage play. I fully expected Levin to burst into a song or monologue before the ball. This film is so bad that such a thing wouldn't even be odd. With every passing minute I'm reminded more and more of Moulin Rouge!. (That isn't a compliment. Moulin Rouge! nearly made my brain explode.)

Why on earth is Anna almost always smiling? Even in scenes when there's nothing to smile at? Is her face stuck like that? Is it supposed to show she doesn't take anything seriously?

That ball has some of the weirdest hand gestures I've ever seen. It looks like someone who knew nothing about ballet looked at some ballet gestures and tried to copy them. What on earth is the point of that fireworks thing? Somehow I doubt it was in the book.

Amazingly things get even worse. I skipped several scenes. By the time the race happens I just wanted this travesty to be over. The viewer is supposed to be sad when Anna's supposedly dying. I hoped the end was finally in sight, until I remembered hearing how Anna actually dies. Guess what, she recovers and the film continues to stagger on.

The director clearly wants to portray that woman at the opera as a villain. Unfortunately he overlooked the unimportant little fact that Vronsky and Anna are among the most repulsive characters to crawl out of a gutter and onto a screen.

Dolly used to be one of exactly three characters I felt sorry for. But then she -- Dolly, whose husband is an adulterer, who more than anyone else should know how devastating Anna's sin is to her family -- says she's happy to see Anna. What the hell? 😠

The film drags on and on. Anna becomes convinced Vronsky is going to leave her for another woman. Why is she surprised? He's already shown he has no morals. The viewer is clearly supposed to pity her. I just looked at the clock and prayed the end would come soon.

Laughing at this abomination is the only way to get through it without throwing things at the screen. Thankfully the film provides plenty of things to laugh at. I guffawed at the scene where either time has stopped or everyone has been replaced with wax statues. The constant cuts between Anna and a train's wheels are more disorientating than funny, but I still managed to laugh at the director's ham-fisted attempt to drum up some sympathy for her before her death. That ship sailed a long time ago, I'm afraid. (Or perhaps I should say "That train left a long time ago" instead.)

Oh, for goodness' sake. We're supposed to believe Vronsky could hear Anna's death from a long distance away? And that Anna's body would be intact and conspicuously injury-less after being run over by a train?

The film finally ends! ...With a scene of a theatre overgrown with flowers. What. At least it doesn't show what happened to Vronsky, so the viewer is free to imagine him dying too.

There should be a law forbidding incompetent idiots from making films. Anyone who disagrees will be convinced if they watch this film. Anna Karenina is absolute trash as a film, but it's a good look at the depths to which some directors can sink.

Is it available online?: Dear god, I hope not.

Rating: 1/10. I hesitate to even give it that. Perhaps 0/10 would be better.