DOCTOR ZHIVAGO Movie Review
1965 David Lean
Though it doesn't equal Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean's epic wartime romance may be his most accessible film. It tells a simple love story in a complex setting and, for the most part, avoids easy resolutions to messy emotional relationships. Even though the focus is squarely on those relationships, everything in the film revolves around the Russian Revolution. The vagaries of both World War I and the prolonged struggles among the various Bolshevik factions are the driving forces behind the plot.
In adapting Boris Pasternak's novel to the screen, writer Robert Bolt tells the story in flashback, with the powerful Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness) questioning a teenaged girl (Rita Tushingham) about her past. He thinks she might be the daughter of his brother Yuri (Omar Sharif) and Lara (Julie Christie). Flashback to their youth and the first time that Yuri and Lara's paths cross on a streetcar. He's a promising, prosperous medical student and poet, engaged to his childhood sweetheart Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). Lara is the daughter of a dressmaker who has a long-term “arrangement” with Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), a well-connected lawyer who understands the political changes that are coming. Lara's fiance Pasha (Tom Courtenay) is an idealistic revolutionary who is part of that change. Komarovsky's interest in Lara is not platonic.
As those relationships are being sorted out, protesters are marching in the streets and the Czar's troopers are taking them seriously. In the first big confrontation between a demonstration and a cavalry charge on snow-covered streets, Lean avoids the inevitable comparisons to Eisenstein's Odessa steps scene in Battleship Potemkin, but he can't help but make a few references to it. The clash in the streets also serves as a counterpoint to Komarovsky's seduction of Lara, and the two elements are deftly interwoven. The combination of the personal and the political has seldom been so seamless or effective as it is in that long sequence.
The most memorable scenes, however, take place during World War I and the revolution: a mass of deserters meets a mass of replacement troops on a lonely road; Yuri and family embark on a long grim rail journey from Moscow to the Urals and negotiate territory controlled at times by Red Guards and at times by White Guards; a machine gun attack on an unseen enemy across a field; Yuri's being dragooned into service and then his long trek back home through the snow.
The Cold War being what it was in 1965, Lean was denied permission to make the film in the Soviet Union, but Spain, Finland, and Canada are more than adequate substitutes. They give the film an impression of stark, beautiful expanse. Lean's canvas is the full-width Panavision screen. He and cinematographers Freddie Young (who won an Oscar) and Nicolas Roeg use all of it in both interior and exterior scenes. Ideally, the film should be seen in a theater. Failing that, find a letterboxed tape or disc. Ignore pan-and-scan editions.
On the other hand, some of Lean's devices—the use of mirrors and windows, lighting that isolates eyes in shadowed faces, Guinness's voice-overs to bridge narrative gaps—are overused. In a film of this size, those are minor flaws. Finally, like all love stories, this one depends on viewers’ involvement with the characters, and these work very well. The two leads are attractive, but not in conventional Hollywood terms, and their supporting cast could not be better. Courtenay was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar, but Steiger's Komarovsky is an indelible archetypal survivor.
Doctor Zhivago remains one of the most ambitious and watchable of the “big” ‘60s films, and one of the best depictions of a civil war's terrible human costs.
Cast: Omar Sharif (Yuri Zhivago), Julie Christie (Lara), Geraldine Chaplin (Tonya), Rod Steiger (Komarovsky), Alec Guinness (Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago), Klaus Kinski (Kostoyed), Ralph Richardson (Alexander Gromeko), Rita Tushingham (The girl), Siobhan McKenna (Anna), Tom Courtenay (Pasha/Strelnikov), Bernard Kay (Bolshevik), Gerard Tichy (Liberius), Noel Willman (Razin), Geoffrey Keen (Prof. Kurt), Adrienne Corri (Amelia), Jack MacGowran (Petya), Mark Eden (Dam engineer), Erik Chitty (Old soldier), Peter Madden (Political officer), Jose Maria Caffarell (Militiaman), Jeffrey Rockland (Sasha), Wolf Frees (Comrade Yelkin), Lucy Westmore (Katya); Written by: Robert Bolt; Cinematography by: Frederick A. (Freddie) Young, Nicolas Roeg; Music by: Maurice Jarre. Producer: Carlo Ponti, MGM. Awards: Academy Awards ‘65: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Color), Best Color Cinematography, Best Costume Design (Color), Best Original Score; American Film Institute (AFI) ‘98: Top 100; Golden Globe Awards ‘66: Best Actor—Drama (Sharif), Best Director (Lean), Best Film—Drama, Best Screenplay, Best Score; National Board of Review Awards ‘65: Best Actress (Christie); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘65: Best Director (Lean), Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Supporting Actor (Courtenay). Budget: 11M. Boxoffice: 111.72M. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running Time: 197 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Letterbox, Closed Caption.