Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch War and Peace, Part II: Natasha Rostova
1966 · Sergey Bondarchuk · War and Peace, Part II: Natasha Rostova on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the camera enter the ballroom and never stop moving. (camera)
It threads between dancers, rises, and circles instead of cutting between fixed angles, so the room feels like one continuous space rather than assembled shots.
Payoff: You arrive at the ball exactly as Natasha does, dazzled and slightly behind the room.
Watch for the same bare tree appearing twice. (camera)
Bondarchuk films Andrei passing the same oak once bare and later in full leaf, with no music or dissolve marking the change between the two shots.
Payoff: The months that changed the tree are handed to you as a gap, not an explanation. In the reading: chronosign. The reading calls this a chronosign: time itself shown directly in the gap between two shots, rather than measured through action.
Watch how Natasha carries herself in a crowded room. (performance)
Savelyeva, trained as a ballerina rather than an actress, uses her carriage and the way she occupies space to let the room move her rather than acting a scene.
Payoff: The room carries her rather than the other way around. In the reading: movement of world. The reading calls this the movement of world: the dancer goes still and the room itself takes over the motion.
Notice people in the background pursuing their own business. (staging)
Rooms are filled to the edges of the frame with characters doing their own thing, so the camera selects from a full world rather than arranges one.
Payoff: Every space feels inhabited beyond whatever the main scene is asking you to watch.
Listen for sound arriving from off to the side. (sound)
Crowd murmur, music, and voices are placed directionally around you, so a room's noise surrounds you rather than sitting flatly in front.
Payoff: The sound design puts you physically inside the crowd instead of facing it from outside.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch for images and objects that recur, the oak, the waltz, and notice how little the film explains why.
A Deleuzian reading of War and Peace, Part II: Natasha Rostova →