"This Isn't Me, Yuri. It's You."

If your love for Doctor Zhivago is unqualified, you may not enjoy reading this review. For that matter, if your scorn for the film knows no bounds, you probably will find much to disagree with in this review as well. In my opinion, the Academy mostly got it right in relation to this particular film (a rarity?). Four of the five Oscars that went to Dr. Zhivago related to the film's look and sound: best cinematography, best art direction-set decoration, best costume design, and best musical score. Dr. Zhivago looks and sounds great – about as good as any film you'll ever see. It's an utterly sumptuous treat for the eyes and ears. It's heart and soul, however, is what is suspect, despite the fact that the film won its fifth Oscar in the adapted screenplay category. It's not an awful screenplay by any means, but it just doesn't stand up to the glossy postcard quality of the visual and auditory production values. Part of the fault for that lies with scriptwriter Robert Bolt and another part with director David Lean.

Historical Background: David Lean (1908-1991) had two very nearly distinct careers as a filmmaker. In the first, he made small scale character-driven films, mostly in black-and-white, and in the second, he made monumental epics, in blazing color and with magnificent sets and costumes, but sometimes losing control of the dramatic aspects of his stories. Lean had started out in the film industry, at age nineteen, as a tea boy at Gaumont. Later, he acquired directorial skills by adapting plays for the screen. He had great success with a film version of George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara (1941), for example, and then a series of plays by Noël Coward. After winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Brief Encounter (1945), Lean directed two of the finest adaptations ever made of novels by Dickens: Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). In the early fifties, he added another string of successful films, including The Sound Barrier (1952), Hobson's Choice (1954), and Summer Madness (1955).

Then, Lean shifted gears dramatically, turned his attention to big-budget epics. The first of these was The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Buoyed by that indisputable success, Lean next directed Lawrence of Arabia (1962), an expansive epic set in Egypt and on the Arabian peninsula. Dr. Zhivago (1965) was Lean's third great epic and another triumph. It was a great phenomenon when it was released in 1965. Though it had to compete with the magnificent The Sound of Music, Lean's great film still managed five Oscars. Doctor Zhivago was also one of the ten top grossing films of all-time, adjusting for inflation.

The Story: Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness) is a high-ranking official in the Soviet government. He is intent on finding the missing lovechild of his deceased half-brother, Yuri (the title character), by his mistress, Lara Antipova. Yevgraf believes he's found her in the form of a young soviet worker named Tanya (Rita Tushingham), but the young woman has no recollection of her parents whatsoever. Yevgraf relates what he knows about his brother's history in the hopes that some aspect of the story will trigger a remembrance on the part of Tanya that could confirm her identity as his niece.

In a flashback, we observe the funeral of Yuri's mother, when he was just eight years of age. Two devoted friends of his mother, Alexander (Ralph Richardson) and Anna (Siobhan McKenna) Gromeko take Yuri (Tarek Sharik) in. Yuri thereby acquires a sister by adoption, Tonya (Mercedes Ruiz). Yuri's only inheritance from his mother is a Russian stringed instrument, similar to a lute, called a balalika.

Yuri (Omar Sharif) grows up in Moscow and studies to become a physician, under the guidance of Professor Boris Kurt (Geoffrey Keen). It's now 1917. Yuri is also an accomplished poet. Elsewhere is Moscow, the seventeen year-old Lara (Julie Christie) lives with her mother, a seamstress. The mother makes ends meet by accommodating the needs of an aristocratic investor, Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger). Lara is both uneasy and excited when Komarovsky's attentions shift to herself. One evening when the mother is ill, Komarovsky wines and dines Lara and then forces himself on her, first with a kiss in the carriage and, later, raping her in her home. When Lara's mother attempts suicide by swallowing some toxic liquid, Komarovsky calls in Professor Kurt in the hopes of maintaining discretion. Kurt brings along his young protégé, Yuri Zhivago. While Kurt is attending to the unconscious woman, Yuri observes Komarovsky again forcing his attentions on Lara.

Lara also has a young fiancé named Pavel "Pasha" Antipov (Tom Courtenay). He's a young idealist, committed to the anticipated revolution. Pasha participates in a demonstration by young leftists that is broken up by the charge of the Tsar's mounted Cossacks. Many demonstrators are killed or wounded. Pasha shows up that night at Lara's door with a deep gash across his face and asks her to hide his handgun for him. Lara, still smarting from Komarovsky's sexual assault, decides to avail herself of the pistol to shoot her victimizer. She locates Komarovsky at a dinner party where Yuri and Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) are preparing to announce their engagement to the assembled guests. Lara proves a rather poor shot, merely wounding Komarovsky in the arm. Yuri ends up attending to Komarovsky's wound, but declares his disapproval of Komarovsky's morals. Komarovsky, who has had his fill of Lara, replies that Zhivago can have her as a wedding present.

When the Germans invade Russia, fate once again intervenes to bring Yuri and Lara together. Yuri is serving as a physician near the front lines and Lara is searching for her husband, Pasha. Encountering a large number of wounded soldiers, Yuri spots Lara nearby and asks if she's a nurse. She isn't but she volunteers to help out. Working closely together for months, the two fall ever more deeply in love, though Lara insists that the relationship remain chaste. She and Pasha already have a little girl.

When Yuri returns to Moscow, the Bolsheviks are in charge. The Gromeko's large home has been commandeered and now holds seventeen families. Anna (Madame Gromeko) has passed away. The Gromeko's are allowed just one room and there are severe shortages of food and firewood. Yevgraf Zhivago is working as a policeman in Moscow and locates his half-brother's home. He urges Yuri and his family to leave Moscow and settle in the country. The Bolsheviks don't approve of Yuri's poetry, so there's bound to be trouble for the family if they remain in Moscow. They decide to head for the Gromeko's former estate in the Ural Mountains. It's a harrowing train ride during which they witness devastation and civil warfare between the Red Army and the White Army. Yuri briefly encounters Pasha, who has recast himself as a vicious Red Army commander, now named Strelnikov. Yuri learns that Lara is in Yuriatin, which is the town nearest to the Gromeko estate, at Varykino.

After an arduous journey, Yuri, Tonya, Alexander Gromeko, and little Sasha arrive at Varykino, only to discover that the Bolsheviks have confiscated the main house. They take up residence in the nearby cottage, struggling to survive a freezing winter amid massive snowdrifts. Spring finally breaks through, turning ice crystals into blossoms. While visiting the library at Yuriatin, Yuri inevitably encounters Lara. Soon, the pair is locked together in a torrid love affair.

While returning from Yuriatin to Varykino on one such occasion, Yuri is forcibly conscripted by a Red Army unit led by Liberius (Gerard Tichy) and Razin (Noel Williams). He's to be their medical officer, like it or not. He witnesses a charge by the Red Army into a line of machine guns and, later, a senseless slaughter of a group of young lads from a military academy. It's several months before Yuri is able to make his way back to Varykino. His family is nowhere to be found, but Yuri discovers an old message from Tonya. In dire need of rest and food, Yuri seeks out Lara in Yuriatin, where the two renew their romance. Lara has a letter from Tonya that she's been holding for Yuri for three months. Tonya and the rest of Yuri's family are safe in Paris.

Komarovsky, who is well placed in the new Bolshevik order, locates Yuri and Lara to advise them that they are in danger and to offer his help. They refuse it, however. Both still view Komarovsky as morally contemptible and are unwilling to deal with him. Recognizing the truth of his warning, however, the two take up residence at Varykino. There, Yuri is able to again write poetry, at the same desk where he had first learned to write as a child. His poems are filled with his sentiments of love for Lara, though she declares that they reflect him instead. Komarovsky returns to warn them that they will be arrested the next day unless they return to Moscow. Though reluctant to part from his beloved, Yuri encourages Lara to leave with Komarovsky, for the sake of her child. Unknown to Yuri, Lara is also carrying his child inside.

Back in Moscow, a sickly Yuri gets one last glimpse of Lara, from a streetcar as Lara is walking alongside on the street. He suffers a heart attack while trying to reach her. Later, Yevgraf meets Lara briefly, recognizing her former significance to his dead brother from the "Lara poems," and learns that she has a child by Yuri. Later, Lara dies and the child is abandoned by Komarovsky, bringing the story full circle to Yevgraf's effort to locate the orphan.

Themes: Perhaps the essential conflict in both the novel and the film is the security and rights of an individual versus the faceless collectivism required in the new Soviet system. After the revolution of 1917, everyone in Russia had to choose between emigrating and acquiescence to the new Bolshevik order. Pasternak decided to remain in Russia, despite having no enthusiasm for the Revolution. All of his relatives emigrated to Germany and never returned. Pasternak married Yevgeniya Lurye in 1922. Except for a visit to Berlin in 1922, Pasternak was never again permitted an exit visa, even when his wife's health might have been aided by a period of recuperation with his family in Germany. Pasternak publicly maintained an "apolitical" posture, but, to the Soviet authorities, such a stance was a dangerous display of "individualism." Although Pasternak avoided outright persecution until 1958, he was out of vogue with the authorities from the 1930's on. The Soviet Writers' Union was spearheading orthodoxy under the doctrine of Socialist Realism and Pasternak was philosophically (rather than politically) opposed, recognizing that great art springs only from artistic autonomy.

In adapting the novel for the screen, Bolt substantially eviscerated Pasternak's viewpoint. Despite the film being made during the height of the cold war and in a country highly antagonistic to the Soviet Union, the film's take on Communism is a good deal less critical than was the novel. What comes across in the film is the idea of individuals being swallowed up by the general sweep of cataclysmic historical events rather than the oppressive nature of Soviet Communism. The film's first violent political scene, in fact, relates to the brutal charge of the Tsar's Cossacks against a crowd of protesting pre-revolutionaries. The contrast between the opulent lifestyle of the aristocrats and the poverty of the masses is also made quite evident. Later, the interchangeability of the Red and White Armies in terrorizing the peasants is emphasized when a woman in a group of refugee women reports being brutalized. When asked whether the soldiers were Red Army or White, and responds, "Just soldiers." It is really only during two scenes in Moscow and the flight from Yuriatin that the film presents the Communist's political agenda as the primary source of oppression for Yuri and Lara. Pasternak's novel was first and foremost a critique of the effect of the faceless, impersonal rationalism of Bolshevism on the integrity and freedom of individuals. Bolt reconstructed the terms of the argument as the smallness of the individual when caught up in the midst of large-scale political upheaval.

Production Values: The screenplay by Robert Bolt was based on a Nobel Prize-winning novel by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960). Pasternak, who was best known in Russia as a poet, refused to accept the award, under pressure from Soviet authorities. The novel, written in a style consistent with the great tradition of Tolstoy, had acquired tremendous popularity throughout the world except with Soviet authorities, who considered the novel subversive. The character Lara in the novel was based largely on Pasternak's lover, Oiga Ivinskaya, twenty-two years his younger. She spent two periods in prison because of her association with Pasternak. Pasternak had been twice married. He was non-supportive of the Communist order and especially its effect on artists and writers, who could no longer work in an atmosphere of security or freedom. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak's only novel, was written during the years following World War II. The final chapters were completed in 1952. Feltrinelli published the novel in 1957, in Milan, Italy. After the novel has awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in October of 1958, Pasternak was subjected to cruel persecution by the Soviet government. His livelihood (which consisted of translating German and English works into Russian) was cut off. Pasternak died May 30th, 1960, from lung cancer.

Bolt decided to emphasize the romantic aspect of the novel. Certainly the political/historical element is there as a canvas, but what's forefront is now an elusive love story, somewhat in the manner of Gone with the Wind. Thus, Hollywood-style romance was given precedence over Pasternak's incisive themes. The problem with that decision is that the romance is neither sufficiently elevated nor passionate to provide a solid dramatic core. To begin with, the "hero," Yuri, is not fundamentally heroic. He's mainly a passive observer, wafted by the winds of his time, but unable to assert his principles or to participate in shaping the era in which he lives. As depicted by Bolt and Lean, Yuri is solipsistic, gazing pensively at the great events fomenting all around him. He keeps his emotions bottled up inside. Even in love, he seems unable to act with conscious purpose. He gazes with puppy-dog eyes at Lara and gets drawn into an affair with her as though he were an automaton in a trance, oblivious to his marriage vows or the impact his actions would have on the pretty and devoted Tonya or his child.

Then there's Lara. Beautiful Lara! Yes, she's lovely enough to gaze at, but she's got little personality and even less internal identity. She's depicted mainly as a possession that bounces like a pinball from Pasha Antipov, to Victor Komarovsky, back to Pasha, and, finally, on to Yuri Zhivago. She's a bit of putty, molded by each man to his particular needs. For Antipov, she's part of the youth movement – the new order – and a woman to be abandoned out of revolutionary zeal. For Komarovsky, she's a slut, so needy of physical passion that she's too easily raped. For Zhivago, she's his Clara Barton, his nurse companion on the battlefield sharing his idealistic work. One reviewer's explanation of why Yuri falls in love with Lara, despite being happily married to a gem of a woman in Tonya, is quite revealing: "Well, look at her for God's sakes. Is any further justification really needed?" All that matters in a woman is her looks, right? I suppose, then, the marriage vows should be amended to read, "until death us do part or until I come across someone else so lovely I just can't resist." Lara is the lovely, blank-slate, kind of woman onto which every man can project his desires. The men who "love" her are really only in love with their own capacity to acquire a trophy mistress. It's particularly telling that even Lara understood the mechanics of her relationship with Yuri. On reading his "Lara poems," she says, "This isn't me, Yuri, it's you." The real love story in this film is Tonya's devotion to Yuri and Yuri's self-absorption in return.

The pseudo-romance between Yuri and Lara does serve one script purpose well. In the end, the romance is overwhelmed by the circumstances in which they live and the historical events. That, I think, was Pasternak's main point and one key point which Bolt, thankfully, preserved. The Russia from 1917 until Pasternak's death in 1960 was almost continuously a place in which individual lives, hopes, romances, and expression were far too often swallowed up by insane wars or by an impersonal State. However shallow their association may have been, Yuri, Lara, and their relationship ended up as sacrificial victims of the movers and shakers, such as Komarovsky and Streinikov.

Another glaring flaw in the film is its uncertainty about which character is providing the focal perspective. We observe most of the events from the viewpoint of Yuri Zhivago but get periodic voiceover narration and framing events featuring his brother, Yevgraf Zhivago. This waffling makes the point of view highly unstable.

On the other hand, the visuals and the soundtrack for this film are fantastic. Lean used his $16 million budget to faithfully reproduce the Moscow of the time as well as epic snow-covered landscapes of incomparable beauty. The film could not be shot in Russia, so they used sites in Spain and Canada instead. The cinematography is gorgeous even when focused on a smaller scale. Viewers are treated to tantalizing images of ice crystals forming on windows, snow banks giving way to yellow flowers, dew drops gathering on flower petals, steam locomotives flying across the steppes, and much, much more. The scenes of violent conflict are convincingly done, including the charge of the Tsar's Cossacks into a crowd and a later charge of the Red Army cavalry into the machinegun placements of the White Army. The set design and costumes replicate the era beautifully and precisely, based on meticulous research. Many of the individual frames could be hung on a wall as works of art. Maurice Jarre's score is one of the finest in film history, including the much-treasured "Lara's Theme."

Lean assembled an all-star cast for the film. Omar Sharif is very good in the lead role, given the problems with how the role was conceived, as discussed above. Sharif's other work includes appearances in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Funny Girl (1968), Juggernaut (1974), Top Secret (1984), and Hidalgo (2004). I also discussed above my reservations about Lara Antipova as a love interest, but I suspect that Julie Christie extracted all that was there to be had from the part, though she's a little stiff. Christie appeared in such films as Billy Liar (1963), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Petulia (1968), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), The Go-Between (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Hamlet (1996), Afterglow (1997), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Off what I've seen so far of her work, I don't think she's my kind of woman or actress. I prefer Geraldine Chaplin, whom I've admired whenever I've seen her work. Her resume includes The Three Musketeers (1973), Welcome to L.A. (1976), Cria! (1976), The Age of Innocence (1993), and Talk to Her (2002).

Two of the best performances in Doctor Zhivago were in supporting roles: Rod Steiger as Victor Komarovsky and Tom Courtenay as Pasha Antipov. Steiger appeared in many important films, including On the Waterfront (1954), Oklahoma! (1955), The Harder They Fall (1956), The Longest Day (1962), The Pawnbroker (1965), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and The Amityville Horror (1979). Courtenay can be seen in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Billy Liar (1963), King and Country (1964), The Dresser (1983), and Last Orders (2001). It's always nice to see Alec Guinness, though his performance here doesn't approach the greatest ones of his career. Ralph Richardson is effective as Alexander Gromeko. Rita Tushingham, who played the hoped-for niece, also appeared in A Taste of Honey (1961), The Leather Boys (1963), Girl with Green Eyes (1964), The Knack . . . . And How to Get It (1965), The Bed Sitting Room (1969), and Under the Skin (1997).

Bottom-Line: The two-disc special edition DVD set from Warner Brothers has a splendid set of extras, though there's quite a bit of redundancy among them and more anecdotes than incisive analysis. Picture quality was maximized by splitting the film between the two sides of a double-side disc. That works especially well for this film because it includes an intermission anyway. The commentary track was recorded in two separate sessions, one with Omar Sharif and Lean's widow, Lady Sandra Lean, and the other with Rod Steiger. There's an introduction to the film by Omar Sharif that viewers have to sit through whether they want to or not, unless they fast forward. Also provided are a "making-of" kind of documentary from 1995, promotional featurettes, press interviews with Julie Christie and Omar Sharif, and Geraldine Chaplin's original screen test. There is also an eight-minute bio of Boris Pasternak.

This is a great film, ranked among the top British films by the British Film Institute and among the top American films by the American Film Institute! Notwithstanding my reservations about the script, you should want to see this film at least once for its gorgeous visuals and soundtrack. It's long, at 200 minutes, but its epic grandeur more or less justifies the time investment.