Vile

Rating: 1/10 (27 November 2006)

Dr. Zhivago When are filmmakers going to realize that beautiful scenery does not a good movie make? If the AFI were to make a list of 100 Most Beautiful but Excruciatingly Dull Films, Doctor Zhivago would be number one with little or no competition in sight. David Lean was an excellent director, but no director, no matter how brilliant or talented, could improve this ponderous postcard. Let's not forget it has "Lara's Theme", which is cinema's most nauseating piece of music. To be fair, though, the negativity of my review primarily stems not from the relentless length of this overrated epic, but my disgust over the love story. Yuri Zhivago (doe-eyed Omar Shariff) is a brilliant doctor with a poet's heart who lives during the Russian revolution and who's married to his childhood sweetheart Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). But familiarity breeds contempt and Yuri falls hard for volunteer nurse Lara (Julie Christie in all her vacant-eyed glory) while away on assignment. Lara has a tragic past and an unlucky history with men, yet she is easily the most boring troubled woman I've ever seen. Even though they are both married to others, Yuri and Lara begin a barely secret affair. They have several things in common, such as looking good in fur hats and being maddeningly uncomplicated. Meanwhile, Yuri and Tonya (remember her?) have been forced to move from their comfortable estate to a more modest home in the country, and to Yuri's perverse delight, Lara lives right down the road. In the film's most sickening scenes, Yuri goes off, supposedly to work, kisses the ever loyal Tonya good-bye and proceeds to sleep with Lara. Stuff happens, everyone dies, but by then I was too bored with the film and repelled by the so-called love story to care. The story pretends to care about the bigger issues at hand (Communism, the Russian Revolution) but it's really about the love triangle of Yuri/Lara/Tonya. Personally, I think Yuri was not only a dog for abandoning his wife and son, but a fool to even cheat on Tonya in the first place. Tonya is cultured, intelligent, steadfast, loving and beautiful (Chaplin resembles a more cherubic Audrey Hepburn). Chaplin deserves special praise for portraying the best woman a man could have without heading into Stepford Wife territory. I thought Lara was a dull, dreary, vapid object of lust and desire. Julie Christie was the most overrated actress of the '60s, an "A" student in the Sit 'n Stare School of Acting. I also never understood why people found her so damn attractive. I always thought she was a colorless, blubber-lipped Plain Jane. Gentlemen may prefer blonds, but in this case why???