A Serious Candidate for Best Film of All Time

I have, ever since my first review on epinions, known that eventually I would write about my favorite film, "Doctor Zhivago."  I love this movie so much that I have never even been tempted to read the book.  I understand the 21st-century update of the film was more faithful to the source material, and having seen that, one understands why Pasternak was worried about leaving the Soviet Union and being prevented from coming home.  The first flaw of the 1965 version is that the NKVD General Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness) is portrayed so sympathetically and the hard edges of the post-Russian Civil War Stalinist terror are only hinted at.  But of course this is how a person in that position would describe the Great Terror, and Yevgraf is the narrator.

Fortunately, most of the story is not told through Yevgraf's eyes.  We do not even know where he lived following the death of their mother, although it is a safe bet he became a revolutionary because he had it much harder than Yuri (Omar Sharif), who was taken in by an upper-class friend of the family, Gromyko (Ralph Richardson), whom he managed to impress so favorably that ultimately he marries his daughter Tonia (Geraldine Chaplin).  Yuri becomes a good doctor and a great poet, but with the coming of the Revolution his poetry is pooh-poohed by the Bolsheviks for focusing on the personal life they would like people to forget they have.

While the prologue of the film (mostly told in flashback from a meeting between Yevgraf and Yuri's youngest child in 1946) is the funeral of Yuri and Yevgraf's mother, Act I takes place in Moscow before World War I, where Yuri meets Lara (Julie Christie), Pasha Antipov (Tom Courtenay) and Kormorovsky (Rod Steiger).  One could say that these three are in a love triangle except that would imply that Kormorovsky is capable of love.  When Lara realizes how ill-used she has been by Kormorovsky, she shoots and wounds him, causing the whole story to come out at least to Yuri, who treats Kormorovsky.  Yuri marries Tonia, Lara marries Pasha, and then World War I breaks out.  All the principal characters have now been introduced, but the real appeal of "Doctor Zhivago" lies in their transformation as Russia disintegrates and re-forms around them as a totalitarian nightmare.

There are at least six distinct acts not counting the 1946 scenes -- before World War I, at the end of World War I, in Moscow, the train trip/Yuriatin, with the partisans, and awaiting the Bolsheviks -- plus an epilogue, set in 1930.  (The new version incidentally ends with the epilogue).  This is why the movie had to be so long.  We see the last 17 years of Yuri's life almost like a cinematic biography of a fictional character. 

It is never quite made clear how Yuri managed to avoid being shot by the partisans as a deserter for 8 years; presumably Yevgraf, showing more humanity than most people in his position, pulled some strings.  In addition, as Kormorovsky makes clear in his penultimate appearance, the Bolsheviks regard him as "a small fry."  Kormorovsky nonetheless strongly suggests that Yuri accompany him to the Pacific coast of Russia so that he, Yuri, can leave the country.  This version, unlike the book (if I read artbyjude's review correctly) fails to make clear that Yuri chooses to remain because of his love for Russia, not because of his disgust for Kormorovsky.  This is its second flaw.

There is really no doubt that Yuri loves both Tonia and Lara.  His love for Lara is made possible by a particularly sad transformation of Pasha Antipov, who spends Acts III, IV and V trying to forget Lara.  By virtue of not trying to leave the country, he ultimately chooses Lara, even though he has had two children with Tonia.  Tonia is his alpha but Lara is his omega -- in an existential as well as a romantic sense.

I was a teenager with a special interest in Russian history (particularly the Revolution) when I saw "Doctor Zhivago" for the first time, which I suppose accounts for my special affection for it.  I watched it with my first girlfriend and my parents out of the house for most of the night, and nothing happened.  I also watched it with my last girlfriend and made up for my poor track record.  "Doctor Zhivago" is an emotionally moving and visually breathtaking film that magnificently presents a unique place and time in human history and a situation (the love triangle) that is timeless and universal.  Six stars.