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.

The Battle of Neretva (1969)

I have been trying to watch The Battle of Neretva (Bitka Na Neretvi) forever. I finally found it on YouTube this afternoon and watched it tonight. This is a war film about Yugoslav communists fighting the Germans, the Italians, and German allies in Yugoslavia during WWII while trying to get hundreds of wounded and sick people to safety. The film stars an international cast headlined by Sergei Bondarchuk, Franco Nero, Yul Brynner, Hardy Krüger, and Orson Welles and it is an epic. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this movie. The only thing I can think of that compares to it is Saving Private Ryan, which was made in the late 1990s. The battle sequences in The Battle of Neretva are insane. Just insane. I cannot believe this was made in 1969. This movie absolutely blew my mind. Half the film I just sat with my jaw dropped. It's a superb achievement.