Doutor Jivago

Great performances, story and cinematography - you could gaze into, fall into the eyes of the protagonists all day and be mesmerised by their beauty and charm, along with the passionate and heartfelt performances. A love story set among a complex and continuously evolving social and cultural landscape with a fair bit of coincidence and luck - we all need a slice of that. Some of the most impressive scenes, scenery and camerawork you're ever likely to come across. It all makes for a film that can truly class itself as epic and classic but, in the modern era the exceedingly long duration and the traction required to get up a head of steam renders it a rarely revisited history lesson of the limited attention spans of contemporary times, albeit something that should grab your attention on at least one occasion during your cinematic journey.

You really do miss something when you see a formatted version of Doctor Zhivago as I recently did. This is the kind of film that was made literally for the big screen. It's what epic movie making is all about.

I also think that you should see this on the big screen back to back with Warren Beatty's Reds. Two very opposite views of the Russian Revolution, one from the inside and one from the outside. You could have a very interesting discussion on which is which.

The title character, played by Omar Sharif, is Dr. Yuri Zhivago who is both doctor and poet. He was orphaned as a child and raised in the house of Ralph Richardson and Siobhan McKenna. He marries their daughter, Geraldine Chaplin who of course he loves, but naturally like a sister.

The real passion of his life is Julie Christie who is married to a committed Bolshevik in Tom Courtenay. Courtenay is also a guy, with shall we say, some issues. She loves him in her own way though and goes to search for him when he volunteers for the army to subvert it as the Bolshevik plan was when Russia entered World War I.

Christie meets Sharif at the front and the passion ignites. But all around them the society they knew and were brought up in is crumbling about them. Their story set against the background of the Russian Revolution is what Doctor Zhivago is all about.

Zhivago knows change was inevitable, the old order in Russia was ready to be toppled. But he's a poet and not one to let his art be subverted for the sake of the state. Fortunately he's also a doctor and his services are needed, in fact the Bolsheviks rather brutally insist on his accompanying one of their brigades as a medical officer.

I still remember as a lad the acclaim Boris Pasternak's novel got world wide when it was published while being banned in his home land. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pasternak died shortly thereafter. It's a pity he did not live to see this film, I think he would have approved.

From the deserts of Arabia to the steppes of Russia, David Lean certainly knew how to direct a film that involved vastness. Yet the people of his stories be it Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago never get lost in the spectacle. Lean makes you care about the characters that Pasternak created, you get involved in the romance of Sharif and Christie, you want to know if they'll make it in this country undergoing revolutionary convulsions.

Other performances of note are Alec Guinness as Sharif's half brother Yevgeny Zhivago, a committed Bolshevik himself and Rod Steiger as the opportunistic Komorovsky.

Doctor Zhivago won a host of awards in several technical categories, strangely enough it wasn't nominated for Best Picture in 1965 though. It is a classic and even now with the Soviet Union a memory, I doubt if even a Russian made remake of Zhivago could equal what David Lean and his wonderful cast gave us in 1965.

Apparently, "Doctor Zhivago" is one of the most successful films in movie history. Although critics weren't particularly impressed, the public sure was and came to the film in droves. Today it's considered by many to be a classic. I've seen it a couple times before and decided to watch it again tonight--since it's been several decades since I last saw it. While I would agree it is a very good film and has a HUGE scope (like so many of David Lean's films), I would hardly suspect while watching it that, adjusted for inflation, it's one of the 10 highest grossing films in history.

The film is a sweeping saga of several people during the period of the Russian Revolution--both before and after. I could summarize the film but considering that there are already over 200 reviews, I'll spare you. At three hours and twenty minutes, oddly, not a lot seemed to occur in the film. I am not complaining or saying it was dull, as it was a lovely film--with very nice cinematography and music. It's just that the film is the type that slowly and deliberately unfolds--and the more hyperactive might not find that to their liking. The acting is quite nice but I think the real star is the direction. My only reservation is that with the great romance between Zhivago (Omar Sharif) and Lara (Julie Christie)--they both were married and Zhivago's wife (Geraldine Chaplin) was a lovely person. This did make it difficult for me to care about the characters more. Still, it's a lovely spectacle and well worth your time.

Omar Sharif remains indelibly associated with Dr. Yuri Zhivago, a Russian physician-poet who participates in the Bolshevik Revolution, only to have political history affect him against his will. Julie Christie is beautiful as ever as Lara Antipova, Zhivago's true love.

"Doctor Zhivago" certainly pulled off a coup by showing the conditions that led to the revolution: the czar's despotic rule, the crushing poverty, and forced conscription (especially since the generals cared nothing about the men under their command). Then, of course, the Russian people thought that they would have a workers' society, but it didn't turn out that way. The theme song "Lara's Theme" kept the movie going every step of the way. Maybe not the greatest historical drama of all time, but this is a movie that I recommend to everyone.

David Lean's Doctor Zhivago is a fine and stirring epic which has stood the test of time. One baseless criticism which pops up again and again dwells on..... Julie Christie's sixties bangs!! To me they were cinematic shorthand for "schoolgirl," which her character was at the outset of the plot. For those hung up on hair, the really noticeable sixties styles in this film can be seen elsewhere: Early in the film, as Zhivago is conferring with his professor at medical school, we see a group of female medical students in the background with teased bouffants. Later, at a Christmas party many of the female extras are adorned with the same anachronistic coiffure (this is supposed to be 1912 Moscow!). As to bangs, one can find, for instance, photos of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova from around the same period with very obvious "sixties" bangs. Bangs have been around to one degree or another, whether in vogue or not, since there has been hair. Case closed.

Another worthless criticism: It's too slow, too long. Phooey. Some movies have to be slow and long to tell a big, detailed story.

If one is going to criticize this film, I suggest the following: 1. Screenwriter Robert Bolt's kneading of the characters' lives into the progression of the Russian revolution is sometimes at odds with actual chronology, so that anyone familiar with this period cringes from time to time. In one scene, in order to identify for the viewer the historical point that has been reached, a character blurts out (I paraphrase, but only very slightly): "Lenin is in Moscow! Civil war has started!" Neither could have been true at that moment in the narrative. Bolt could have polished his distillation of the novel, but who, apart from direct participants, can ever know why such gaffes occur in high-pressure multi-million-dollar productions? 2. This is yet another movie about a writer, in this case a beloved but politically controversial poet, not a word of whose poetry is revealed to the audience (except for the title of one poem, "Lara," after the woman he loves). Other major movies, including Julia (1977) and Wonder Boys (2000) also commit this offense. Ironically, one exception is the campy and rather dreary Isn't She Great (2000), about trash novelist Jacqueline Susann, which actually explores the act of writing! 3. The physical reproduction of the era is uneven. Some moments are too clean. One example: When Zhivago slides open the door of the ostensibly foul-smelling box car in which he and his family have been traveling for weeks packed alongside filthy, probably lice-ridden passengers, he looks too healthy, scrubbed and well rested. This and other moments stand out because they occur in the context of innumerable convincing depictions such as mud-filled wartime trenches, a looted and vandalized city mansion, or a half-frozen refugee tramping stiffly over the ice of a frozen lake. 4. It is said that Russian viewers laugh at the onion-domed house where the lovers hide from the Bolsheviks. Russian churches have onion domes, they say, but not houses. Granted. But I'd like to think that the person who built this particular house was an eccentric and got away with the concept because the house was in an isolated rural area away from the prying eyes of the "architecture police."

In any case, the emotional truths underlying the occasional inadequate or wrongheaded representations register powerfully. The grand-scale perspective gives a sense of the tumult of the times; vivid and memorable casting choices keep us fascinated with the characters and concentrated upon them; you feel the terrible losses people suffered when history so rudely pulled the rug out from under them; you are reminded of the pitiless cruelty of war and the depths to which people in its grip can descend; and how despite the tragedies of our history, we go on no matter what. David Lean had a great gift for injecting bold images at just the right moment. And he had the same gift for the perfectly timed sound effect, often occurring at an edit point. At Zhivago's end one feels a tremendous sense of sadness and loss but hope for the future. Considering the international political climate of the time of its release, it treats the Russian Revolution with enough detachment to illuminate both sides of the political divide. In other words, it doesn't propagandize for either side.

This was the first major Hollywood treatment of the Russian Revolution, was still running in theatres around the world two and three years after its initial release, despite dismissals from most of the major film critics of the time. Its popularity came from word of mouth, i.e., from the public's genuine love of the story and its striking, technically expert presentation. Interestingly, Zhivago as a box office blockbuster was second only to The Sound of Music, released the same year. Both films told the story of individuals faced with historically recent Old World political upheavals (communism/fascism). Furthermore, the soundtrack album of each film took on a life of its own, selling millions of copies. And why not also add that central to the success of each film was an English actress named Julie (Christie as Lara/Andrews as Maria). How many times have you heard of or personally known a woman under 40 with the previously uncommon name of Lara? Guess why that name became popular in the 60's and afterward?