On Natasha/Andrei (and Natasha/Anatole)

Ask on Tumblr:

Spot on analysis of ep4. But i think chemistry or no, the way anatole was played made it impossible to believe she'd fall for him & it was too rushed to believe anyway. Good point about the parallels, changing dolokhov there was just stupid, it makes everyones motives confusing & unexplained. About andrei's love ,cuz in the book its clear he did love them both, its cuz its so rushed & looks like a whirlwind romance, almost the same as anatole/natasha!

Re Andrei and Andrei/Natasha: The thing is, the Andrei/Natasha romance WAS whirlwind. I mean, he only sees her 4 times (5, counting when he stops at Otradnoe but they don’t really talk at that time and he’s mostly confused by how happy she seems). The four times are: 1) the ball, 2) he goes to her place and she sings for him, 3) Vera’s party, 4) another visit to the Rostovs where their conversation is mostly small talk. Now, this is a little more substantial than Anatole/Natasha but barely. I mean, to the point where it really doesn’t make a difference. He decides to marry her after FOUR (5 is you want to be generous) meetings. Not “date” (court, I guess it would be back then) but MARRY. How is that not crazy? 

Now, of course, AFTER he proposes to her, it’s made clear in the book that they get a 2-3 months to actually get to know each other after he proposes and before he leaves. That’s still not a lot of time but at least it’s something. But the thing is, he had already proposed and she had already accepted after FOUR meetings. (Moral of the story obviously being that no one needs a lot of time to fall in love around there lol.)

And, sure, i think he, at the least, thought that he was in love with Natasha. I don’t mean that he wasn’t being earnest. (But Anatole was earnest too, yet we always talk about how his feelings were something, but probably not love.) And the thing is, I feel like it would have ended as badly for her as it did for Lise if she had married him. He probably thought that he loved Lise too when he married her. Lise was a sweet if not too serious girl, which is exactly what Natasha is. And, honestly, you already see the whole thing breaking down in Andrei’s proposal scene. Andrei’s “poetic” feeling for Natasha, once she has accepted him, suddenly changes to “duty” and “pity for her feminine and childish weakness.” Really? Duty and pity? And it sounds a lot like what Andrei was feeling for Lise there at the beginning and, IMO, that was not a positive relationship.

Comparing Natasha’s reactions to her two romances also leads to some interesting results. Her during Andrei’s proposal scene:

“Is it possible that this stranger has now become everything to me?” she asked herself, and immediately answered, “Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than everything in the world.”

Her, after kissing Anatole at Helene’s party;

But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. “Else how could all this have happened?” thought she. “If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the first.”

Natasha’s instincts are on point in both cases. She recognizes that Andrei is still a stranger to her. She recognizes that things are going too quickly with Anatole. But the way she responds in both scenarios is silly, but also nearly identical: she practically talks herself into falling in love.

So, yea. The adaptation rushes everything but the fact that Andrei and Natasha have a whirlwind romance isn’t actually incorrect.

And that bring me to Anatole in this adaptation. I do think Callum dropped the ball here a bit. It could have also been the direction he was given. But I think it wasn’t even so much the acting as the pacing/writing and also the lighting/soundtrack. Also, this adaptation, as you said, gives no breathing room, does not allow for any sort of insight into characters it doesn’t care much about and Anatole is one of those characters. It’s hard to believe that Natasha could fall in love with him because the music and the lighting are basically screaming NOT A GOO IDEA. It’s not so much how much interaction the characters have actually had, it’s more about how the narrative frames it (in a very heavy-handed way) and what insights we get into the characters’ feelings. And, yes, the adaptation falls into the typical trap of the seducer-stereotype, but it’s not the only one that does.