Follow the Red Brick Road

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2004)

It is only at the end of this epic film that you realise that it is a bit like the Wizard of Oz, the Ladykillers and Once Upon a Time in America combined - it was all a dream.
At the very beginning, General Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness), the revolutionary general who has reached the great position of commander of the local dam (shot on location, somewhere in Finland, presumably) explains that there is another Zhivago. It is night-time, bleak and there are many proletarian, depressed looking people - all bearing the star red star on their caps - arriving for work at the new, grim, Stalinist super-project. They all look about as dedicated to the dictatorship of the proletariat as George Best is committed to stay on the wagon after about 10 hours into day one.

Then it's back a few years, two hours of the other Zhivago, before all ending happily back at the dam - only, this time, it's daytime, the sun is shining, and Rita Rushington can go home with her boyfriend, walking literally over the rainbow as they stroll across the dam. As they walk, there is a smashing rainbow below them created by the water flowing from the top of the dam. It was all a bad, nasty dream - but, we're all now in a communist paradise!