Distorted Storyline

Rating: 5/10 (18 November 2005)

The film is wonderful. Acting is superb but is this the real Pasternak story? I read the novel after I watched the movie and I was shocked to see so many outrageous distortions to the story. Characters, events and places are often interchanged simply for the sake of performances by the actors and sometimes to give cinematographic effects, both of which were exploited to the fullest extent. More than half of the story is missing. What forms the core theme, the Russian revolution, is nowhere in the film. Lean was masterful in chopping off anything that does not fit into his version of Doctor Zhivago, the love story of Lara and Zhivago (that's all he wanted to depict) with all the snow covered houses and the famous theme tune on balalaika, the balalaika which never existed in the original story.
The thing is that everything clicked. The artistic touch is not missing here. But it missed the point, the main focus of the story. What we saw is just a mushy romantic tragedy of two people who did not meet each other. People should see the movie and read the novel and then criticize the movie.