Doctor Zhivago

The third nominee for Best Picture in 1965 was Doctor Zhivago, one of David Lean's big, epic pictures. I saw this years ago on television, and remember a few of the scenes, most notably when the two leads show up to find their entire house frozen (even the inside). It's a three-and-a-half hour film, so I watched it over two consecutive days.

Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, which was banned in the Soviet Union, Doctor Zhivago is a romance set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and the years following. It's framed by a Soviet officer, Alec Guinness, looking for his niece, who is the daughter of his half-brother, the titular medical man (Omar Sharif), and his lover (Julie Christie). Guinness tells the tale, even though he couldn't have possibly known it since he wasn't there for most of it, a considerable narrative error.

Sharif is at heart a poet, and not political. Christie is a teenage girl who is engaged to Tom Courtenay, devoted to the revolution. But she becomes the mistress of a piggish financier (Rod Steiger). Courtenay marries her anyway. Sharif, whose parents died when he was young, is taken by friends of the family, and marries their daughter (Geraldine Chaplin).

World War I hits. It is thought that Courtenay dies. Sharif meets Christie tending to wounded soldiers on the front. But the revolution comes, and when Sharif comes home he finds his house has been seized and now home to several other families. He decides to head to his father-in-law's country house, and the family goes by train, a rough ride. It is then that he finds out that Courtenay is not dead, but has reinvented himself as a ruthless revolutionary.

Sharif and Chaplin build a happy life in the country, but he runs into Christie in town and they begin an affair. He ends up shanghaied by the Bolsheviks and pressed into service as a medical officer. He returns to find his family has left the country, but Christie is there for him.

The film has all the majestic sweep of a film by Lean, but something is missing. It may be that Zhivago is such a nice guy that he isn't very interesting (he is never judged for being an adulterer). Christie's character is also very passive. The film received a lot of criticism that the romance trivialized the history, but that's nothing new in Hollywood films. Frankly, I liked the approach Lean and his screenwriter, Robert Bolt, show both sides of the conflict were bastards.

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Doctor Zhivago is the music by Maurice Jarre, including the hauntingly beautiful "Lara's Theme" (also known as "Somewhere My Love").