I watched the film in Russian, as I'm a Russian speaker.
The film focuses less on the characters and the people, and mostly focuses on patriotic issues, such as showing how Napoleon and the French are cruel, showing how the Russians are brave and how they protect their motherland and "sacred Moscow".
The story telling is very outdated. There are jumps within the story between scenes. Scenes with potential emotions and empathy are cut short, just when they get interesting, and sometimes the narrator just tells you what happened instead of showing it. You can count the emotional scenes on 1 hand. You just can't get any connection to the characters.
The battle scenes are impressive, with many participants and extras, and are done in a very large scale. But they are too long and tiring. After you get impressed from the first minutes, you just get bored and wait for the lengthy scenes to finish.
The too long and outdated effects and the lengthy many philosophical texts also do not contribute to the viewing experience.
And add to everything the length of these film-series...
I was very disappointed, after having high expectations due to the good reviews on IMDB.
Recently I watched a much newer version made by BBC. It was much much better and interesting - it captured all the key moments and developments, but added a lot of emotion and empathy to them.
Review of War and Peace
