War and Peace

Sergei Bondarchuk's 7-hour epic is a stunning, incredible achievement, and I loved it.

Bondarchuk's film emphasizes poetry over story. Flashback, nuance, dreams, and the sheer phenomenological experience of wonder take priority over historical facts. And this is all to the good. Rather than feeling as though we can always make sense of something, we instead feel overwhelmed by Tolstoy's world – and deeply a part of it.