Doutor Jivago

By this stage of my life, I've seen thousands of movies and I can still say this movie is still one of the 10 best I've seen. Especially considering it was produced in 1964 /1965 without todays technology. When considering the cinematography, acting, story line and overall dynamics of the story... WOW don't know how it could get any better; in my mind anyway. I don't understand how or why it only has an overall rating of 7.9 on IMDb (majority of votes at 7/10) and not even in the top 150 movies list. In all fairness though, probably 90% of the viewing audience today hasn't even seen it Well, times have changed and SiFi and fantasy seem to be more popular now.

I can't remember the origin of the quote, but I remember it distinctly. A Communist Party official of the Soviet Union, justifying the Bolshevik destruction of Tsarist Russia, told a foreign observer, `If you want to make an omelet, you've got to break some eggs.' The visitor replied, `I see the broken eggs, but Where's the omelet?' Dr. Zhivago is set at the time when the Bolsheviks, feverishly ideological, were creating their socialist state. The epochal drama that unfolds is the age-old question about whether the ends justify the means.

As materialists (matter precedes spirit, not vice versa), the Bolsheviks believed that they had found the holy grail of human progress in Marxism-Leninism, and were now able to assume the reins of history in their own hands. They believed that their violence was not only justified, but necessary, oblivious to the fact that they, too, somehow felt the angel of medieval teleology smiling over their shoulders.

In contrast to the Bolsheviks, Zhivago's ethos, if he had one, was almost identical to Kant's `categorical imperative,' which had just one axiom: treat people as ends in themselves, and not as ends to a mean. There couldn't be a sharper moral contrast.

There's a fabulous scene midway through the movie that highlights the difference in moral attitude. Dr. Zhivago confronts a communist functionary who has ordered the destruction of a village, a hamlet suspected of aiding the Mensheviks by selling them horses. To the Bolsheviks, if you weren't 100 percent behind them, you were a `counterrevolutionary,' sorta like Dubya's idea that you're either for us, or against us. And so Strelnikov, the passionate Bolshevik, glibly justifies his actions to Dr. Zhivago as easy as if he were tossing his hair aside, saying that the annihilation of the village, however cruel, is necessary to make a point. Zhivago replies: `Your point; their village.'

I love this film, a timeless epic. If there's a more beautiful heroine in all of movie-making history than Julie Christie (Lara), I'm not aware of it. And Omar Sharif is stunning as Iuri Zhivago, who heals the body with emetics, scalpels, antiseptic, and gauze, while he heals the soul with his poetry. Although the movie is three hours and 20 minutes long, the cinematography is so efficient, evocative, and densely layered that one hardly notices. This is, in my opinion, one of the best films of all time.

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.

As much as I love cinema, it comes as a shock to me that I never sat down and watched this film. I was very young when it came out, my parents saw it and quite liked it, and I remember them buying the stereo record soundtrack, with details of the film and pictures of the cast, and reading it in detail. Still, the thought of sitting down and watching the whole movie, of what appeared to be cold, dark, alien Russia, was of no interest to me. However, I finally watched it a half century plus since it came out. I also read both current and contemporary critical ratings of the film, and could not be in greater disagreement with most of them.

This is a great movie. It is long. It is memorable. But it is neither a soap opera nor foolish. It is not a documentary of Russia in WW1 and then going communist. It is a life and love story against a backdrop of these things. Critics should accept what a movie is about, rather than what they wish it were about.

A movie like this, like all epics, gets a chance to show detail and immerse you in the environment. I never felt so chilled, and so bothered by the wind--all in my head--as during watching this film. In that way, actually feeling like you were there, has only been as realized for me in one other film, "The Last Picture Show", where the feel of chill and desolation in that movie is pervasive.

All performances are great, don't let the idiots tell you otherwise. I read that many felt the Sharif was wrong, or expressionless. Sorry, but that is his character. He is trying to be a professional physician, and keep the appropriate facade in the face of changes that are absolutely surreal. Christie possesses the kind of visual magnetism that makes the infatuation of Zhivago plausible. Rod Steiger, who is guilty of preposterous performances in other films, hits the keys of his performance so perfectly you never disbelieve him. Lesser actors would have just made him the perverted rapist that he is, but nothing more to add to the dynamics of his personality. Courtney as high-minded, full of foolishness, and in the end, blinded by frustration and I believe a touch of madness.

Another thing I found splendid about this film was how it illuminated how evil, twisted, and preposterous the scheme of communism truly is. In this film, and of course in history, all the wealth of the rich is removed, and redistributed. This fixes nothing. What it does allow for, in its BS concepts that all men are the same and are all "comrades", is that you don't rise due to merit, you rise because of who you know. The movie time and again shows complete idiots in charge of things...the "managers" of the old Zhivago house who have converted into mass housing for the jealous poor who hate Zhivago and his family. They couldn't be more useless. The leaders of various combat units. The guy who tells people on the disgusting train about the "features" of the accommodations. Yes, in communist countries, the cream never does rise to the top. The working class does whatever is told, just for the benefit of the scraps and their survival. Lara at one point states something like "it's a horrible time to be alive"....and nothing is closer to the truth than that.

Again, not documentary or a wartime story, but its concepts and truths are right there.

The production, of course, top notch. Watch it, take a break or two and soak it all up. It is a special kind of movie, back when they made such a thing.

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.