The three points are for the splendid production values. I have not read the novels but offer this point of view based solely on the TV series. Well acted by all means, but Fortunes of War is ultimately tedious and horrendously disjointed. It is like watching a Play for Today that goes on and on and on. While Plater's terse and character-obsessed style no doubt works for short TV drama and the stage, it is out of place in a lavish and lengthy production such as this. In the end there was no plot to speak of. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. I kept waiting for some drama, some explosion of conflict between the seemingly endless numbers of characters but again there was nothing. Yes, we had a snapshot of Europe on the brink of war, of the British ex-pat community at play, desperately trying to ignore the gathering storm and looking to their own self interest. But so what? This theme has been done to death. The characters were quirky in some cases (and then only in an irritating way) but mostly they were extremely dull. I was unable to care about any of them. We are told that the story is about the break up of the Pringle marriage as it faces the stresses and strains of impending war. But the impending war never seemed to really threaten and the British ex-pats seemed almost unconcerned about it. The Thompson- Branagh relationship- if relationship is the right word- lacked any passion and from the start they seemed to be two dull people ideally suited to each other. There was never ever a 'relationship' to break up and so when it 'started' I really didn't feel anything at all. Branagh's character was the most disappointing, almost soporifically so. We are told he was a communist, feverishly against war, yet he expresses little outrage at the collapse of civilization (apart from the odd and very unconvincing 'war is an outrage' uttered over yet another glass of wine). Not such an outrage that it should interrupt his frankly absurd obsession with Shakespeare et al at a time when everything Shakespeare stood for was crashing down on his head. All the characters seemed to be thoroughly amoral. The only one I frankly cared for was the old man and the toy dog he dragged around. In the end that summed up this failed production for me. Nothing but a drag.

A big novel's length is always a challenge to a film adaptation of the work. When six novels are involved, as is the case here (from Olivia Manning's The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy), the task of adapting the work means most of it gets left behind. How to produce a script that retains some of the novel's uniqueness and flavor but is still coherent to viewers unfamiliar with the novel? Various solutions come to mind. For example, Volker Schlöndorff wisely bit off only the first third of Günter Grass's masterpiece, The Tin Drum, and created a film that at times exceeds its source material in power and impact. And against all odds, the young Ray Bradbury managed to extract key scenes and language from Moby Dick to come up with a script which, when coupled with a decent director (John Huston) and good casting choices (I'm thinking here of Orson Welles as Father Mapple), made a pretty decent movie.Sadly, with Fortunes of War, casting works against the film. Where Guy Pringle is a big bear of a man in the novels, Branagh's sensitive Guy just isn't the same character. And where Harriet Pringle is a small and at times frail woman in the novels, Thompson's Harriet is, well, Emma Thompson. This is not a small matter. The novels' point of view is that of Harriet and what we get there is a detailed, personal, even intimate view of the Pringles' marriage. If you read these novels all in a rush, you almost become Harriet Pringle for a time, immersed in the details of her marriage, seeing the world through her eyes. There's a toughness to Harriet, but also vulnerability, something that Guy often misses as he plunges into one project after another. Little of this comes through in the film.Of course something will get lost in the translation from the literary to the filmic – this is a challenge all film adaptations have to face. But in this film, the mismatch of the lead actors and the characters they play is simply too much to overcome.

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.

This is a very long, but also very enjoyable movie (originally a tv series) set against the background of WWII. Guy Pringle (Branagh), a university professor, leaves Britain and comes to Romania to teach. He has a love for his wife (Thompson) and all the people surrounding them. We watch his passion to make a difference when other people are escaping from Germans marching toward their city and gain influence from within. Relationships develop between the couple and locals, and we start to care about most of them. We see how horrible everyday life could be with the constant threat of war, but how it isn't. We observe Guy treat everyone around him with good intentions, at the expense of his wife, and we want to shake him to come to his senses. We follow their journey to other countries, and the movie is a joy to watch from beginning to end. There are a few memorable scenes between Guy and his wife that I cannot forget, and Branagh really touches me when he cries. The acting by all the cast is simply wonderful, and the movie is definitely worth spending 3 hours.