Fortunes of War

I've watched this 3 hrs+ movie a dozen of times already, and I am sill thirsty for more. This movie is packed with beautiful acting by nearly all casts. These English actors seem to know how to control their facial expressions, vocal tones, body movement with remarkable precision to convey all degrees of emotions and personalities. Directing, music, costume, editing, cinematography are all equally good as well, and together with the great actings, creates a beautiful harmony. This movie is made of one piece. Like "Lawrence of Arabia", whereever we slice it, the piece has a harmony, like the music by great composers.

If I have to live in a desert island and can bring one video with me, I guess I'll choose this one.

And that is maybe the biggest compliment that can be given to any Tv adaption of a book, which the majority of the time miserably fails .

Having read and loved the Balkan and Levant Trilogies by Olivia Manning (an excellent, underrated author), I can vouch that this adaption is so true to the original book that every time I have re-read the books, I see in my mind's eye all the characters in this series.

Kenneth Branagh in particular is outstanding as Guy Pringle, the absent minded English professor more in love with his work than with his wife ( until something occurs near the end which makes him realise what it would mean to lose her).

Excellent musical score , landscapes and acting throughout. Of course the 80s production looks a little dated for today's standards but as long as you can overlook this, it's a masterpiece.

Discerning Northern Irish actor Kenneth Branagh and the beautiful, brilliant Emma Thompson met and presumably fell in love here, as they play bohemian British newlyweds Guy and Harriet Pringle who arrive in Bucharest, as does the slothful, flat broke Prince Yakimov, who takes up an ad hoc job as a photojournalist of sorts on a British paper to save himself from total indigence. Harriet is introduced to her fellow expatriates, but their happy life is disjoined by the assassination of Romania's prime minister and Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Gossip murmurs of a German invasion of Romania and Guy, mentally consumed all the same in his work and arranging civil occasions, is gaulled by his Communism (no pun intended) to take peripheral measures to take care of the family of a Jewish student of his from the anti-Semitic Romanian regime. Although this premise sounds as if it gains momentum and grows more and more exciting, it decidedly does not.

Almost reminiscent of the Jean Renoir film Grand Illusion, Fortunes of War shows a group of people segueing through meetings with different cultures, a war raging on around them but not bothering them any more than some other long-term struggle. But unlike Grand Illusion, the conflicts between the characters are unrelated to the war. It is only one of the dominoes that instigates the many things they do, mainly because they, calm and collected, take refuge in their culture, which remains impervious to the effects all the other ones seem to try to impose upon them through each of these seven one-hour episodes. We watch Guy's lofty devotion to make a difference and boost morale from within. Histrionics mature, decelerate or sustain between the couple and those who come and go from their lives, and we start to care about most of them. With this apposing of following the Pringles subjectively and impartially observing their affiliates, we see how fearful daily life could be with the consistent foreboding of war, but how it isn't. We contemplate Guy with his wife as he preoccupies himself with good intentions towards so many, yet at her exasperated cost, and we want to rattle him out of his cerebrum for a breather in her heart.

In seven hours, the story goes through no significant mood swings, nor any real climax, even in the final episode. But that's just how all of its characters feel about it. Life just goes on, and on and on. Characters latch on, decisions are made, people come and go. My favorite part is when Pinkrose finally gets to give his lecture on Lord Byron.

I've just watched Fortunes of War again after a 17 year gap and it is every bit as good as I remember it.

The fact that Branagh and Thompson's marriage fell apart in the 1990s adds poignancy to their acting of marital tensions here.

Much of the drama revolves around Harriet's struggle to get Guy to "see" her as a person in her own right, although Branagh's portrayal of Guy's grief is the emotional high point.

Two supporting roles deserve a special mention - Ronald Pickup as the (ultimately) lovable aristocratic rogue Prince Yakimov, and Alan Bennett as the blinkered, snobbish and self-important Lord Pinkrose. Thank God we were spared more than the first five words of his lecture!

Even the small roles (e.g. Simon's army physiotherapist) are beautifully played.

The camera work is also wonderful - particularly the final shot.

The only drawback of seeing it on video, as opposed to the original TV episodes, is that the haunting theme tune is only heard right at the end of the film.

It is always difficult to judge a movie based upon a book without passing judgment on what it manages to retain and what it (un)intentionally leaves behind. Olivia Manning's books used to be banned in Romania during the communist régime, and that is probably the reason why this TV series has been shot in some locations in Yugoslavia at the time of its production (1986 - 1987). I find the acting excellent, and the atmosphere filled with nostalgia. Nevertheless, given the fact that the producers have included various black-and-white excerpts from WWII documentaries, I find it inexcusable that they haven't also included vintage images of Bucharest in the 1940's, and especially of the Athénée Palace Hotel. Using some lugubrious Ljubliana building as a stand-in is very hard to swallow, especially for someone very well acquainted with the splendours of interbellum Bucharest. The same could have been done about the Royal Palace. And this would have hardly increased the costs. Apart from that, I find this worth watching and re-watching. As one grows older, one sees things differently.