An Epic Romance And Historical Drama

Rating: 10/10 (25 September 2012)

Doctor Zhivago is an epic romance and historical drama that stars Omar Sharif and Julie Christie together with Geraldine Chaplin,Rod Steiger,Alec Guinness and Tom Courtenay. It is loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak and it has remained popular for decades. It was directed by David Lean.
Doctor Zhivago covers the years prior to, during, and after the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of poet/physician Yuri Zhivago. In the tradition of Russian novels, a multitude of characters and subplots intertwine within the film's length of more than 3 hours. Zhivago is married to Tonya, but carries on an affair with Lara, who has been raped by ruthless politician Komarovsky. Meanwhile, Zhivago's half-brother Yevgraf and the mysterious, revenge-seeking Strelnikoff represent the "good" and "bad" elements of the Bolshevik revolution. This epic, sweeping romance, told in flashback, captures the lushness of Moscow before the war and the violent social upheaval that followed.
David Lean focused all his talent as an epic-maker on Boris Pasternak's sweeping novel about a doctor-poet in revolutionary Russia. The results may sometimes veer toward soap opera, especially with the screen frequently filled with adoring close-ups of the leads - Omar Sharif and Julie Christie - but Lean's gift for cramming the screen with spectacle is not to be denied. The streets of Moscow, the snowy steppes of Russia, the house in the country taken over by ice - these are re-created with his unerring sense of grandness.It is so lush and so long that it becomes an irresistible wallow, even when logic suffers.Overall,this may not be the best of his epics, but it is still brilliantly photographed and sweepingly romantic.