"You haven't seen Dr. Zhivago yet?" my mother has asked me every few months for the past ten years. There were many positive things I had heard about it, but I'd never taken the time to take a look at it. In fact, I've had this puppy on tape for over a year now and only looked at it this weekend for the first time.
Where to start? First off, Zhivago has made many critics alltime lists and is a favourite among the great epics of the modern cinema. I can certainly see why. My three star rating is certainly not one of personal high-mindedness or condescension: this is a truly well-made movie. There were moments in the first hour of the film where I was truly blown away, including some elegant camerawork, and invigorating glimpses of pre-Revolutionary Moscow. Unfortunately, it's also a movie that begins with passionately beating hearts and ends with frozen solitude and a story strangely devoid of warmth.
The film is of course directed by David Lean, another in his lengthy canon that comprises other classics such as A Passage to India, Lawrence of Arabia, and Bridge on the River Kwai. Lean is a master of luscious scenery and sweeping romance, but in Zhivago he never really finds a rhythm or a pace to the work.
It stars Omar Sharif as Yuri Zhivago and Julie Christie as Lara. They comprise two separate subplots at the beginning and they eventually embark on a love affair together in the iciest regions of Western Russia. Not only is there little chemistry between these two characters, but the actors give surprisingly hollow performances as well. Normally, the onset of poverty, civil unrest, and desperation are prime backdrops for powerful drama, but here they ironically serve to make the landscape more and more lovely and the characters more and more drab.
There is another element to Doctor Zhivago that frustrated me. Unfortunately, I was familiar with its haunting theme song before I watched it. Played once, twice, or even five times, its melody is beautiful. I had no idea it would be played no less than 30 times throughout the film (I wish I was exaggerating). It becomes grating, repetitive and self-destructive.
Part of the excitement I derived from the film was watching the country discover its own identity. As the people experienced the growing pains that come with revolt and revolution, the leaders experienced doubt and corruption firsthand too. Alec Guinness as Yevgraf and Tom Courtenay as Pasha uttered several interesting lines, and as Komarovsky, Rod Steiger dominated each of the scenes he was in.
But none of the parts added up. I felt the parts of Zhivago's wife and child were terribly underwritten. Some of the quiet moments were too lengthy, while the parts about the Revolution were merely glazed over. Lean continuously hearkened back to a triangle-shaped guitar-like instrument, yet no one ever plays it, so the symbolism is completely lost in a pivotal scene near the end of the film. There is overall very little balance, and that?s a recipe for disaster for an epic.
I was reminded of films that glorify the mystery of love affairs in foreign cities and lands, such as the English Patient. Maybe that's why I wasn't more impressed -- it just seems egotistical and evasive all at once. I'm glad I saw Doctor Zhivago. It has elements of majesty, intrigue, suspense and grandeur. But then it just keeps on going.
