Simply a Stellar Film

Rating: 10/10 (28 November 2015)

This has always seemed like less of a film and more like a old painting. It's colors are intimate and its lines are warm. I feel like I'm in a historic museum every time I see it. Lean, if he didn't make the model for the epic historical drama, he certainly perfected it. All of his films are colored with the sweeping winds of romanticism. And perhaps no film exemplifies that better than this one. Listen to Lara's Theme and try to say that you don't feel like you've been swept up into the best parts of history and romance.
What I find interesting about this genre is how it is both about history and is history. This whole style of filmmaking, this whole ideal of filmmaking, is as extinct as the Russian Revolution or World War I. Some would say this detracts from the film. I would not be among them. To me, all the different layers of history make this film far easier to get lost in than it would have been back in the sixties (not that it wasn't a big hit then; adjusted for inflation, this film is the eighth-highest-grossing of all time, and it collected five Oscars back in 1965.) Basically, this film is a love story set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. The titular Doctor Zhivago is played by Omar Shirif, making him one of the few people to play both a Russian and an Arab. Lara, his love, is played by Julie Chistie. Theirs is a tragic story that takes place all across Russia. It's the first film I ever saw that goes to Siberia for dramatic reasons and actually stays there for a while.
I am always a sucker for well-done tragic love stories, which is good considering how many of them there are. Watching passion be followed by depression and silence has always given weight to tales, allowing people to open up to what they see on the screen or stage. This is a trend that's going to go away; it has been around since at least Ancient Greece and is well alive today, as shown by films like A Fault in Our Stars. They evolve, but they never change.
Perhaps the reason this film remains a classic to this day is because it is both timely and timeless. You feel both the pull of the 1910s and the 1960s, and it matters because the themes at play here are those that everyone can identity with. Whenever I have a lot of free time on my hand for whatever reason, and it's cold and snowy outside (which is often, as I live in Colorado), I'll cue up this film, grab some hot chocolate, pull on some blankets, and just watch.
Humanity has done a lot through the years, but we are physically the same as we were when we started planting seeds and settling down. The basic ideas that appeal to us are the same, so much so that whenever I watch a movie from a time long gone by about a time even further gone by, I feel like I'm almost tapping into long-repressed memories. There are no better cases for the power of film than that.
And there are few movies that capture that evocative appeal better than this one.
In case you were still wondering if the critics complained about long films as much as they do now, the answer is 'yes.' 200 minutes of epic romantic storytelling told against the backdrop of one of the most monumental events of the last century? Too long. Again, this reminds me of that scene in Amadeus where the Emperor cries out that his music has too many notes. While I may not be a great artist or a great critic, I can recognize genius when I see it, and this film is most certainly genius.
The world romance seems trivialized nowadays. I blame Nicholas Sparks, but to each their own. Romance seems associated with either hack writing or old stories written centuries ago. But it does not have to be. It has long been said by poets, overly sappy or otherwise, that love is one of, if not the most powerful force known to man. There have been a few movies that get this and show the 'power' part. Every scene in this film, you feel the bond between Yuri Zhivago and Lara, even when they are not on screen together. The whole separated lovers shtick can get ridiculous at worst and dull at best when shown by someone who either doesn't get how to write a film/book/whatever, or doesn't know how to write a love story. Yes, these two categories often overlap, but you'd be surprised how many great filmmakers don't know how to write a love story.
Lean is not among them. The man was in love with the idea of being in love, as shown by the fact that he got married six times. There are few love stories in film more potent than this one. Every time you see Yuri sit down and write poems to her, you feel what he feels: that hot, heartfelt embrace over the cold crust of the Russian tundra.
In retrospect, it makes sense how much money this film made. When you think of the ideal of old film, what comes to mind? Epic historical dramas? Full-hearted romanticism? Genuinely romantic love stories? Stunning, artful, sweeping camera-work? This film has all of that and then some. It is the definition of an old-school classic, the sort of movie that the more wistful of us wish were still popular in theaters throughout America.
Time has moved on. All the actors in this film are either old or dead. But we can still enjoy a time capsule into a time capsule, a look into a film that looks into the past.