A grand romance

Rating: 7/10 (27 June 2012)

A love story set against a backdrop of incredible tumult and turmoil Doctor Zhivago is a rousing success. No simple romance, it is also an up close and personal account of the Russian Revolution and the devastation it would wreak on the Russian people. Easy to see why the film was banned for decades in the Soviet Union. It's quite a scathing indictment of the Bolsheviks and of Communist society. But it is the love story which truly endures. That is the reason the film is quite beloved by so many. It's a love story so grand you don't even mind that the lovers in question are a man cheating on his wife and a woman who slept with her mother's lover.
Doctor Zhivago is one of those epics which director David Lean came to specialize in. It's movie-making on a grand scale. But for as big and huge and sweeping as the picture is there's that great, yet simple, love story at its heart. Fate brings Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova together. Fate also conspires to keep them apart. The trials and tribulations they go through could break anyone. But their love pulls them through. Even Yuri's wife Tonya, a sweet, loving, wonderful woman who has done nothing to deserve being cheated on would have to admit there is something special about Yuri and Lara. They are meant to be together, no matter how many obstacles the world throws up in their way.
A movie which is 200 minutes long had better have some top-notch performers to carry it along and Doctor Zhivago certainly is not lacking in that department. In playing poet/doctor/lover Zhivago Omar Sharif goes through the film in rather bemused fashion. Bemused at times bordering on bewildered as Zhivago reacts to all that is swirling around him. But Sharif succeeds in conveying the good, gentle nature of his character. Not gentle at all is the vile Komarovsky, played with great relish and bombast by Rod Steiger. Tom Courtenay plays the committed revolutionary Pasha, a man who will have an interesting character arc to say the least. As Pasha changes so too does Courtenay, you can see his performance harden right before your eyes. Alec Guinness plays Yevgraf, Zhivago's half-brother. Guinness doesn't get much screen time, there more or less to serve as the narrator of the piece. But what he does get to do he does just as wonderfully as you would expect him to. And there are the two women in Zhivago's life. Geraldine Chaplin plays the wife, Tonya, in wonderfully endearing fashion. Chaplin proves to be so much more than a pretty face with a famous last name. But of course in this film she was always going to be overshadowed by Julie Christie playing Lara. Christie is utterly magnificent. Of course she looks the part, no great stretch to suggest any man would fall head over heels at the sight of Julie Christie. But Christie acts the part too. Tender moments with Zhivago, combative moments with Komarovsky, emotionally wrenching moments with Pasha, Lara really gets taken through the wringer. And Christie nails it every step of the way.
It's not just the performers filling those six biggest roles who are excellent however. In a movie of this scope there is plenty of room for a large supporting cast and director Lean seemed to bring the best out of everyone. Nobody sticks out in any sort of negative fashion. It does help that there's a great story to work with. Two great stories really. The story of our lovers and the story of the world crumbling all around them. In a movie this long it's fairly inevitable that there will be some lulls and there are. But the movie definitely holds your interest throughout. It never, like some movies of its era, becomes too epic for its own good. Lean reins it in enough while maintaining enough of the grandeur which makes people love epic films in the first place. The film looks magnificent, photographed so beautifully. And everything is backed by a wonderful score featuring the famous Lara's Theme. Put it all together and you have a film which is quite enjoyable. It may not be right up at the top of a list of all-time great films. But it's on the list.