A flawed masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (1 January 2001)

I finally saw Dr. Zhivago complete on television (letterboxed, but with some commercial* interruptions), and was engrossed by the world it created, but left wanting by plot lapses and characterization. As with so many movies adapted from novels I have seen, it leaves me wanting to read the book, to find out what it was 'really' about, to fill in the gaps. I've read my fair share of Russian literature, so I guess it is time to read Dr. Zhivago. Some viewers' comments about the settings and people not looking 'Russian' enough are simply bemusing: Given they could not film in Russia, Lean and company I feel did a magnificent job of finding suitable, convincing landscapes - I live in a region that has similarities of climate, terrain and vegetation to the Russian Steppes (in fact, I suspect they cheated with some second-unit shots of the Canadian Rockies standing in for the wintry Urals - just a hunch) - and I felt the landscape looked right - even if some of the snow and frost effects might have been a bit overdone for dramatic effect - believe, me - I *know* snow and frost - it was Â–31C here last night. As for the 'inauthentic' looking Russians - nonsense! Russia and the CIS states(now and as part of and the Soviet Union) - like Canada, and especially Western Canada (our own Siberia) is a multilingual, multiethnic nation, and one would be hard-pressed to find a 'typical' - looking Russian. Just look at any Russian, or Ukrainian or Belarussian or Georgian and tell me who is typical. Enough on that. As for the characters - well, that's the movies: Sharif and Christie were "it" in 1965 - I would have much preferred to see other actors cast in the key roles - I didn't find the two leads as convincing as I might have with others cast - but who? You could play that game all night. Chaplin as Tanya was vacuous enough, which suited. Steiger was OK, but who might have given even more depth to the role, ditto for Courtenay and so on. What I didn't get from Sharif (or Bolt's script/Lean's direction, to be fair, was a sense of Russian who loved his country so much he wouldn't flee to France to be with his wife an child, or to be with Lara, despite the self-evident horrors of Bolshevism from which he seemed to believe he could stay aloof, even after what he had been through. Again, I had not depth of motivation of conflict in Lara - except for her one dramatic act - which rather than horrify Zhivago, is what seems to excite his desire for her. Too often the characters just seemed to be walking through the scenes without giving off a sense of what was driving them. Nonetheless, it is a magnificent historical spectacle, beautifully photographed, rich in period details, and touches, such as streetcars, trains, costumes, architecture - and the snow!. One little bit of business which I really enjoyed (and I expect I will find in the novel), was the background detail of some of the freezing train passengers hugging the steamchest of the locomotive at a stop to warm up - I can relate to being that sort of cold. Lean's apprenticeship and brilliance and as an editor is evident in how, despite the jumps of time and place and plot development, he managed to make the complex, sweeping story mostly logical and coherent, with the help of the narrator, and some effective stage business (such mimed scenes with Pasha and Lara, and another with Lara and Kondravsky which are most effective, and a necessary exposition scene between Yuri and his brother which combines narration and dialogue very cleverly). Despite all its aspirations to greatness, I guess what left me most disappointed with the movie was that I was left mostly unmoved by any feelings of a great love between Yuri and Larysia - Jarre's score seemed to be intended to be the vehicle for that, but I have never cared for 'Lara's Theme' and its one repetitious motif - as with his repetitious motif in Lawrence of Arabia - is something I find annoying after a while, and a device best left to Wagner, not film score composers. I must be near my word limit by now, so that's all I'll say.

* 'Commercials' on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. being endlessly repeated promotions for other CBC programs.