Doctor Zhivago (1965)

David Lean focused all his talent as an epic-maker on Boris Pasternak's sweeping novel about a doctor-poet in revolutionary Russia. The results may sometimes veer toward soap opera, especially with the screen frequently filled with adoring close-ups of Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, but Lean's gift for cramming the screen with spectacle is not to be denied. The streets of Moscow, the snowy steppes of Russia, the house in the country taken over by ice; these are re-created with Lean's unerring sense of grandness. The movie is so lush and so long that it becomes an irresistible wallow, even when logic suffers--like Gone with the Wind before it and Titanic after. Sharif, who achieved stardom in Lean's previous film, Lawrence of Arabia, mostly looks noble, but the supporting cast is spiky: Rod Steiger as a fat-cat monster, Tom Courtenay as a self-righteous revolutionary, and Klaus Kinski and Alec Guinness in smaller roles. Geraldine Chaplin, in her adult debut, plays the doctor's compliant wife. Robert Bolt's screenplay won one of the film's five Oscars, with another going to perhaps the most immediately recognizable element of the movie: Maurice Jarre's romantic music, with its hugely popular "Lara's Theme" weaving in and out of a swooning score. --Robert Horton Amazon.com essential video

Fabulous

Doctor Zhivago is romance and history and struggle all wrapped up in one tremendous piece of art! July 11, 2008

Beautiful and informative

Based on Pasternak's excellent novel, this is one of the truly great movies. It is strong in all areas. The story is powerful, the actors excellent, the editing appropriate, the sound track wonderful and the cinematography breathtaking.

Even the scene in which the child Zhivago's mother is buried on a bitter Winter day is fabulous. We are actually permitted into the coffin of the beautiful young woman as her orphaned child watches ice crystals forming on his window. Unique, powerful and breathtaking. It's all breathtaking.

Zhivago sees beauty where others see only grief and ugliness. He tries to understand when his family home is subdivided and administered by tight-lipped Communists hacks. Personally apolitical, Zhivago is a witness and victim of the political events of his time. He serves as a physician in the crumbling Russian army; he's a witness to the revolutionary collapse of an army and old Russia; he and his farmily travel in a cattle car to the now-Soviet East, hoping to find food and a little peace. It doesn't happen. He encounters Strelnikov, a Communist fanatic, butcher and old acquaintance. He betrays his wife and falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful Lara.

Idealistic and moral, he tries to control himself and tells the tearful Lara that they must never meet again. Too late. On the way back to his dutiful wife he is captured by the Red Guards and forced to become their physician. He has no love for the Communists but he treats the sick and wounded. In the midst of a terrible Winter he deserts in a futile effort to find his family.

What ultimately happens to Lara? We never find out. A Communist officer cynically speculates, "She was probably one of the millions who "disppeared" and were sent to Sibera, her name on a list, later misplaced."

An interesting aside is that I personally became acquainted with a very old man who had a history remarkably similar to the mythical Zhivago. He was a Russian physician who joined the anti-Communist "White Guards." The anti-Communist forces were pushed further and further East toward Vladivostock. When this port city fell, he and other Russians fled to Harbin, Manchuria. His son, Alex, was born in Harbin but, following the Japanese invasion, came to the U.S. It was through Alex that I got to know the old man. The "long ago" sometimes touches the present.

Ron Braithwaite author of Mexican Conquest novels, "Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"

June 8, 2008

An Epic Story That Only David Lean Could Tell!

This film together with "Bridge On the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia" represent a hattrick of director David Lean's best ever work as well as among the best films ever made. Although "Lawrence of Arabia" is clearly the best of the three, "Doctor Zhivago is a close second. This film has been described quite aptly as Russia's "Gone With the Wind" as the loves and lives of the people close to Doctor Zhivago gets told amid the backdrop of World War 1 and the Russian Revolution all the way to the Russia of the 60's. No one can quite tell an epic story as well as David Lean does and his films are so good that they transcend time and as true classics should they age very well and hold up very well to repeated viewing. The cast is excellent and so is the brilliant camerawork and the haunting score by Maurice Jarre.

This dvd version is a real treat as the second disc is chockful of bonus extras like interviews with the cast and a good making of documentary while the main course on disc one has very good picture quality and especially good Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound quality as well. This dvd represents a remarkably well done restoration of the film which makes it an extremely enjoyable film in this day and age. Even the digipak cardboard packaging is very well done and aesthetically appealing in design.

If you are looking for David Lean's best work, you need look no further than "Lawrence of Arabia", this film and "Bridge On the River Kwai" and in that order.

Highly recommended! June 7, 2008

Dr Zhivago

Great movie to begin with and this 2 disc set was especially nice. I enjoyed watching the old interviews with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie which were conducted back at the time of the original theatrical release. May 5, 2008

A pretty film with an average plot about mostly unlikeable people

I am a woman of a certain age. I had never seen this film before, and sat down to view it with absolutely NO preconceptions or knowlege beyond that it was a 'really famous movie about people living at the time of the Russian Revolution."

4 hours later (allowing for some locking up of the scratched library copy I viewed) ... I slapped myself awake and went off to get a snack.

My reviews will pretty much echo most of the other 2-3 star ones.

It's a very pretty film. The cast is attractive, the cinematography lush, the sets well done. (But the cast may be a bit TOO attractive. I found it very hard to swallow the image of Geraldine Chaplin looking like she's just stepped out of the local beauty parlor after spending 2 weeks in a cattle car with 49 other unwashed people!)

But pretty will only take you so far. The script and direction waver between utterly confusing and utterly boring and utterly unbelievable. The minor characters are almost all two-dimensional ciphers. (The evil Bolsheviks ... very cold-war indeed.) And the major ones are mostly unlikeable and uninteresting. I couldn't really care about either Zhivago OR Lara. Why should I root for their star-crossed love affair? Why should I LIKE this man who is cheating on his pregnant wife for no apparent reason. If they were able to resist their attraction/temptation while working together for 6 months in an isolated army hospital, why couldn't they resist when they met again ... 5 miles away from Zhivago's pregnant wife and beloved son?

The only really interesting characters were the few 3 dimensional ones -- Alec Guiness, Geraldine Chaplin and Rod Steiger's characters. (The last of whom is at least SUPPOSED to be unlikeable.)

At 2 hours this might have been a tolerable chick-flick. But at 3 1/2 it's too long, and far too boring. May 1, 2008

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