Rating: 
Summary: A Terrific Drama
Review: Director David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago", released in 1965, was a remarkable drama which should have won an Oscar for Best Picture. It's certainly worthy of the Oscar title. The film stars Omar Shariff in the eponymous role of Doctor Yuri Andreyvitch Zhivago, Geraldine Chaplin as his wife Tonya, Julie Christie as his mistress and true love Lara, Rod Steiger as the villainous Victor Komarovsky and Alec Guiness as an officer. Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak - the novel, by the way, was banned in Communist Russia- it's true to the novel and is visually beautiful and tragic to behold. It is a film that honors love even in the dark times of the Communist take-over in 1918 Russia. The film was shot in some locations in Spain and Europe. The music is by Maurice Jarre, a French composer of remarkable talent. His "Lara's Theme", the love theme of the movie, is poignant and lilting. The use of the Russian instrument, balalaika and other instrumental music is very dramatic as well as moving. On DVD, this film is truly a treat. Commentary, behind the scenes and subtitles are the bonus features. The film opens shortly before the Revolution in which we meet Zhivago, an orphaned doctor who writes romantic poetry. Zhivago's relationship with his wife Tonya is not passionate. He was married out of the conventional orthodox Russian tradition and they are more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Komarovsky, a decadent and corrupt aristocrat, becomes possessive and controlling of Lara, whose socially ambitious mother pushes her into this sordid relationship. Lara's spirit is crushed when Komoravosky rapes her and attempts to shoot him during a party (this is the first time Zhivago sees Lara). Eventually, the war comes along and Zhivago is sent to support the army as a surgeon. Here he meets up with Lara again as she is serving as a nurse. Lara and Zhivago become lovers after the war, coincidentally when Zhivago's wife Tonya is pregnant with her second child. When the truth of the affair is discovered, Tonya abandons Zhivago, heartbroken. Zhivago and Lara have a daughter, Tonya (in honor of Zhivago's wife, for it seems that Zhivago loved both Tonya and Lara, even if he burned hotter for Lara). Zhivago's daughter Tonya learns of her parents through conversation with Alec Guiness' character who has found the poems written by Zhivago to Lara. A film of polar opposite visuals - the daffodils and wintry castle look innocent and Impressionist-style is a direct contrast to the ugly darkness of the inhumanity of war, in this case the Bolshevik regime. This film is a must have for fans of great drama. Look also for the remake from the BBC and available on DVD now. A film released in 2003 and shown on PBS KCET starring Hans Matheson as Zhivago, Keira Knightley as Lara and Sam Neill plays a truly wicked Komoravsky.
Rating: 
Summary: Historical Perspectives :::SPOILERS:::
Review: I have to admit that I was really confused at the beginning of this movie. I noticed that director David Lean does not stamp "time-setting" markers at the front of his movies; if not done today, it would be irresponsible, but Lean can be forgiven because of the era in which he made his films. It would have been very helpful to have known that the movie opens some years after the Russian Revolution. (The appearance of Alec Guinness as the Soviet Comrade-General is just as believable as his casting as King Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia.) In any event, I was well into the movie before I began to make any sense of it. It was around the time that Pasha (soon to become Strelnikov) tried to enlist Lara's participation in the demonstration that I began to fall into the movie.
The movie itself offers much to the history-buff concerning this important time in Russian history:
"The March for Freedom" -- This scene represented for me the entire spectrum of the type of repression that had been occurring in Russia since 1904. It was especially reminiscent of "Bloody Sunday," that infamous day in 1905 that changed Russian citizens' view of Tsardom forever.
"Army Revolt" -- It was interesting to see just how futile the average Russian soldier's plight was in the trenches along the German front in WWI. The merging of the fleeing and renewing armies and the murder of the officers show without a doubt how the Revolutionary forces had taken control so quickly.
"Journey East" -- Zhivago's (and family's) trip along the Trans-Siberian Railroad revealed the bleakness of the landscape and the bloody civil war between the "Reds" and the "Whites."
"Strelnikov's Point of View" -- In this scene, it can be argued, is the single-most important reason why the Soviet experiment (and Communism in general) failed. When Strelnikov exclaims that "the personal life" doesn't matter anymore, it is very telling.
"Red Army At Odds" -- I particularly liked the argument among the Red Army concerning whether or not they should allow Zhivago to go home to his family after they had "kidnapped" his services. Even in the Red Army, "personal life" was not dead, it seems.
In addition, Rod Stieger's character was very well-conceived and acted, representing that species of human in any land or time period that is able to survive as an "opportunist." The love story, I have to admit, left me a little flat. Zhivago's wife was so nice and generous to him throughout that I lost a little respect for the man when he allowed himself to be swept up with Lara. The book-end scenes with the Soviet Comrade-General (Guiness) and Zhivago and Lara's daughter was especially effective, and provided a happy-ending.
Overall, a very good movie, but wrongly marketed as a love story.
Rating:
Summary: Very Nice Epic Drama
Review: Amidst the Russian Revolution, here's a love story between a married doctor/poet and a beautiful woman who only Julie Christie could play. The scenery in this movie is outstanding. The movie makes you really feel you are there amidst the Russian troops in World War I, or fleeing to the Urals to try to survive the chaos in relative isolation.
Omar Sharif is perfectly cast as the whimsical doctor who sees beauty in everything around him, even as his world is seemingly falling apart. The role Alec Guiness plays as the brother of Dr. Zhivago, torn between loyalty to the revolution and loyalty to his half-brother is moving.
This movie works on many levels. The music is charming, the scenery cinematography outstanding and the acting superb. I can almost smell the woods around Uriatin when I watch this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Coldest movie I've ever seen
Review: When this film came out I was 6 years old. It's always been one of my mother's faves. Is it any surprise it took me until now to get around to watching it for myself?
This classic motion picture epic tells the story of the Communist revolution that followed WWI, and in particular the story of an idealistic, apolitical young physician/poet and the two women who are at the center of his attention at different times in his life. It strikes me as a type of "Gone With the Russian Wind," although the good doctor and his ladies are as far from the passions of Rhett & Scarlett as is the heat of Atlanta from the icy cold of Moscow and the Ural Mountains. In the middle of civil war, however, both films zoom in on the way the events of tumultuous times wreak havoc in the lives of even those not directly involved, and great drama is found in each of these dissimilar settings.
If you're not familiar with the plot, there are other reviews here that can fill you in; I'll not belabor the point. Suffice it to say that I should have taken the time to watch this film long before I did, if only because it has helped me understand the evolution of the Soviet Union (and the inherent weaknesses that doomed it from the start) more than before. It's considered by the NY Times to be one of the 1000 best films of all time, and probably any movie buff would agree.
It has its shortcomings, however. The film too often lingers for wa-y-y-y too much time in periods where characters are simply sitting or lying around doing nothing. Not sure what director David Lean was trying to do with the pace of the story in these extended moments (particularly when the doctor and Lara are in the big house in the middle of nowhere), but this could stand some editing, at least to the eyes of a filmgoer of this later generation. Also, with Sir Alec Guinness as the film's narrator, Mr. Lean adopted a most unusual and jarring device of using Guinness as narrator even of scenes where he appears as what would normally be a speaking character, giving us discomfiting moments wherein a character speaks to Guinness's character and he merely stares at them while his own voice says, in voiceover, what he said to the character who had just spoken to him. (Yes, it's just as confusing as it sounds.)
Finally, I know "Lara's Theme (Somewhere My Love)" is a beloved movie tune, but by the time the film was halfway over I was sick to death of it. That's not quite as boring, however, as the five-minute opening "Overture," featuring bits and pieces of the various music themes played throughout the film; the whole movie begins with a colorful impressionstic painting, one still graphic, shown behind the music, with the word "Overture" superimposed. After about two minutes of that I wondered if the opening credits would ever roll.
"Dr. Zhivago" is a style of movie from days gone by, to be sure. In the ways listed immediately above, it's a good thing that the artisans of modern film have learned to tighten things up. However, one of the major positives of this classic film is that it's from a time when films cared more about the characters and their relationships than the explosions and gore of the war around them. Today's moviemakers could learn from that.
Rating:
Summary: A love like this can never be!
Review: The primordial essence of the tragic love is the impossibility for its whole fullness. No matter how difficulties you have to pass over . The tragedy of the war , the ideological conflicts . All is consummated .
There has always been a weird and sinister fascination in all the world `s latitudes for this painful loves under the most unimaginable circumstances .
The magic pen of Boris Pasternak convinced to Lean to translate on screen all the dramatis personae of two lovers in the middle of the bloody episodes immersed under the oppression , the absence of liberties being Spain and not Russia the great frame to materialize this haunting story .
Its an ambitious stage with all the mammoth spectacle required in those times. And it could not be other way , after Lawrence de Arabia , Lean was the supreme magician of enormous wastelands and superbs illumination , with glorious and magnificent landscapes.
The sexual chemistry Christie-Sharif worked out to perfection. And despite the film is overlong (197 min) the movie is a fest to eyes . Far from being a historic review of facts and episodes , the core focuses around these two lovers with the implacable presence of Tom Courtenay giving one of his two best roles of his life :(the other would be the dresser years later).
Maurice Jarre `s soundtrack is still haunting and one of the most famous melodies ever written : Lara's theme.
Absorbing accounts of an undeniable periods of the human story.
Another additional triumph in David Lean 's career!
Rating:
Summary: It's about Russia
Review: David Lean's 1965 epic has aged well. It is still considered one of the classic achievements of British film nearly 40 years after it's production. What is it all about? The short answer, as Woody Allen summed up 'War and Peace' after taking a speed reading course, is 'Russia'. The film traces the love affair between two Russians, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) and Lara (Julie Christie). Through Revolution, war, marriage to other partners and exile, the two lovers are consistently blighted every time they feel drawn to each other.
The fascination with this film lies in all that it is based on. Boris Pasternak's novel on which Zhivago is based presented a specific view of the Russian Revolution - that of the plight of a bourgeoise Doctor, a man of practical accomplishment but also a sensitive poet. Pasternak himself was a member of the Russian elite and the novel was subsequetly banned by the Communist authorities, holding it to be unsuitable to the socialist cause. The film takes this theme and we are clearly invited to sympathise with Zhivago who has to watch as his large townhouse is divided into flats for 13 families, contrasting his struggles to remain loyal to his family and his poetry with the cold heartlesness of Strelnikov, the Bolshevik Commissar who burns down villages to 'make the point'. Politics runs through the movie like a leitmotief, certainly Zhivago is popular with British politicians who voted it the greatest ever British film production.
The love, war and politics in Zhivago are on an epic scale, and the cinematography supports the vast scope of this movie with superb scenes of the bitter winters in Siberia, the eternal train journeys with escapees of the Revolution piled in to freezing carriages like cattle and the brutal suppressions of protestors by the Russian authorities in the pre-revolutionary years. It is not perfect. Some of the shots of the Urals are not realistic portrayals of the topography of that region, some shots are blatantly of the Canadian Rockies. But this was 1965, and such lapses don't impede the enjoyment of the film.
The plot also suffers in places, the inevitable product of a story taken from a novel of subtle complexity and dubious moral expositions (the novel has Zhivago involved with two women other than his wife rather than one). For example the romance between Yuri and Lara reaches catatonic proportions before the fires have been properly stoked. Some viewers may also find the ending rather underwhelming for such a powerful story.
These flaws however don't prevent Dr Zhivago from holding a rightful place as one of the classic epics of film, set in one of the most turbulent, violent, disturbing and fascinating periods of Twentieth Century history.
Rating:
Summary: Russia Never Looked So Good
Review: Even in the poverty stricken streets of circa 1907 turn-of-the- century Moscow, we mainly see a Russia that's more delectable than what history has revealed. I suppose that's director David Lean's annoyance with the unattractive. Over the years however, I've praised this film as one of my favorites, but as I've gotten older I can see the flaws. The sheer beauty of the sets (especially the snow-filled house in Varykino), color and costumes, and the sweeping soundtrack overwhelmed my sense of the story. There was one scene that was absolutely joyous and that was when Zhivago (Omar Shariff and his fiancee (Geraldine Chaplin) were driving home through snow-covered streets at night in a carriage after a ball and Zhivago sees a candle in one of the upper floors of a building. (In the book, I remember the candle as the one Lara (Julie Christie) put in the window representing the light of love that's soon to come for both of them and as a religious symbol blessing that love.) Zhivago also writes a beautiful poem about it ..."candle, candle, burning bright ...". I would have liked him to have recited the poem to Lara later on or have Lara find it and read it aloud. In the book, Zhivago's brother, played by Alec Guiness (who looks more like Zhivago's father wearing a terrible dark brown wig that makes him look even older) just shows up one day as he did in the film and then he's gone. Too coincidental in a country the size of Russia and doesn't make any sense. Also, the book had Zhivago involved with 3 women, not 2, but Lean didn't think American audiences would either appreciate a man who was involved with 3 women at the same time or believe it (and American audiences were then at least where the money was). Of course, when books are turned into films so much is left out and as director, it was up to Lean to decide what to omit. In the book Zhivago had become a street person, ragged and unclean. That's when this third woman takes him in.
The worst aspect of the film was its core. We were supposed to have believed that Zhivago and Lara were involved in this simmering romance when in fact we don't even get the chance to see the fires stoked. One day Zhivago sees Lara at the home of her mother. No words are exchanged. The next time he sees her at a ball--no words exchanged then either--and after that (I'm sure) she works with him as a nurse at the front during WWI. There's your passionate love. Lean never allowed for their relationship to flourish. The train also becomes another character and a very important one. These trains become paths of introduction, routes of escape and pathways to death e.g., as a boy, Zhivago is introduced to Moscow after getting off a train, Zhivago's future wife comes home to Moscow by train and he meets her at the railroad station, the family is put into a cattle car and sent east etc. The best performances are by Steiger and Tom Courtney who as Lara's commissar husband becomes violent, cold, distant and only devoted to the Communist cause. Julie Christie is also very good as Lara, and her scenes with Steiger are the best. Omar Sharif as Zhivago could have shown deeper incite into the role; I suppose that's why he's heavily made up to look like the way he's supposed to feel in many scenes. Geraldine Chaplin as Zhivago's wife is just a prop. She shows no anger, not even sustained sadness. So one day she too disappears and picks herself up and goes to Paris for good. Still, the film is like a beautiful painting with all the music and color one could hope for. The recent PBS version is one you've got see though. It's much better than Lean's version sans sweeping vistas.
Rating:
Summary: THREE'S A CROWD
Review: Every time I watch this movie, I'm deeply moved, always cry. I rarely watch any movie more than two times, I think I've seen this one more than four. The book Dr. Zhivago was written in 1957, the movie came out in 1965. Evidently, Pasternak's novel was seen as anti-communist and was banned by the former Soviet Union for more than 25 years. I have a hard time figuring that one out because the story is mostly a romance that blossoms between the married Dr. Yuri Zhivago and Lara separated from her husband because of his revolutionary activities at the time of the Russian revolution in 1917. Later, Yuri's wife, Tanya, leaves him to go to America with their two children. There is just so much pathos in this movie, so many tragedies personal and public. The story is about the fictional Dr. Zhivago's life from boyhood around the turn of the last century in Tsarist Russia until his death on a street in communist Russia.
Rating:
Summary: Epic Film-making at It's Best
Review: David Lean has to be regarded as one of the greatest director's of all-time. His skill as a director compensates for the sappier elements of "Doctor Zhivago". There is such richness of detail in this film. The art direction, cinematography, the classic score by Maurice Jarre are all first-rate. He assembled a first rate supporting cast here that includes Alec Guiness, Ralph Richardson, Geraldine Chaplin, Rita Tushingham. Special mention has to be given to Rod Steiger as the villainous Victor and Tom Courtenay as the true-believing Communist Pasha. What detracts from the film are the nominal stars of this film and the central love story. Omar Sharif as Yuri, though good in a supporting role in "Lawrence of Arabia", does not have the heft as an actor to carry a film of this scope. Julie Christie as Lara, though a good actress, comes off somewhat cold and aloof. Now this style may have served her well in "Darling", the film she won the Oscar for, but we are supposed to be empathetic to her character. She doesn't come off as any more likable than Victor. And what of Yuri's subversive poetry? Why are we not given any examples of it? That said, I recommend this film for the richness of the production values. This is epic film-making that is not done anymore, CGI withstanding. As a footnote, alot of this snow and ice covered production was filmed in Spain. The DVD contains a fairly interesting documentary on the making of the film.
Rating:
Summary: The Book Brought to Film
Review: A number of years after seeing "Doctor Zhivago" 4-5 times, I finally got around to reading the book. I was amazed by how the movie followed the book. There were rarely passages in the book that didn't immediately bring to mind a visual picture of what I had already seen. In "Doctor Zhivago" David Lean appears to have intended to honor the novel (by Boris Pasternak) by bringing it to the screen in as complete and accurate a manner as possible. His success in this has, to me, helped to make the movie as great as it is. "Dr. Zhivago" won Boris Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature and it succeeded in winning Robert Bolt the Academy Award for Best Writing. Bolt is certainly a great one for screenplays (consider "A Man for All Seasons") but I can't help but feel he had a head start when taking on this project.
"Doctor Zhivago" is an epic movie and the word that comes to mind in describing it is MAGNITUDE. This story is, first and foremost, a love story and a sad one at that. The sadness is in what might have been. However, it may be hard for some to keep track of the story while great events in history come to life on the screen. We see the 1905 revolution, WWI, the Russian Revolution, the ensuing Civil War just to name the major points. Throughout it all, we have just enough characters to give us an understanding of the class system that determined how these events would turn out. One of the major roles, and, in my opinion, the best acted role, was that of Doctor Zhivago's step brother (played by Alec Guinness). He serves the role of counter-balancing the upper-class attitudes of the title character (played adequately by Omar Sharif). Another important role was Strenlikov, the Trotsky-like figure played by Tom Courtney who garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his fine performance. He brought out the dark side of the Bolsheviks while showing a repressed humane nature of his own. There are many excellent performances including that of Julie Christie who won the Best Actress Oscar that year but for a different movie ("Darling").
The scenery and the costumes and the battle scenes were all outstanding. The Directing, however, is what I credit with making the movie as great as it is. David Lean may spend a lot of his producer's money but he always makes it appear like money well spent. Thank goodness a project like this one was put in his capable hands. In the nearly 40 years since this movie came out, at least two generations may have missed seeing it. Hopefully, the films buffs of today will take the time to see what a real epic movie is all about. The novel "Doctor Zhivago" was a timeless classic. The movie is as well.
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