Voyna i mir III: 1812 god

I've watched all four parts of Bondarchuk's epic twice, and on this rewatch, the battle of Borodino blew my mind all over again. Stupendous and larger-than-life in every way, the cinematography and grandeur in these scenes has to be seen to be believed. It's stunningly masterful, a production which I sincerely doubt anybody will ever be able to match in terms of spectacle.

Characterisation is eschewed in favour of a series of tableaux showing the scale and horror of war in an incredible way that is highly effective and almost unbelievable to behold. However many war films one might have seen, the battle scenes are likely to induce a sense of stupefied shock about the relentlessness and degree of destruction. No doubt the ability to create them owed a great deal to the fact that the memory of the real meaning of wartime sacrifice was still fresh in Russian minds.