"A titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic tome in which the fates of three souls: the blundering, good-hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha, collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, the director conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that...

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides--Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others--Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationƯalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities as much as possible, she goes instead to the places associated with the country's literary masters. With her, we see...