Doctor Zhivago

Rating: Null/10 (16 March 2009)

Julie Christie is impossibly beautiful in her most iconic role and delivers an exquisite performance, second only in the acting stakes to Geraldine Chaplin as Tonya. Chaplin's delightful, awkward turn is utterly charming and she walks away with every scene she's in.
Omar Sharif is less successful as Zhivago. It doesn't help that he's not a particularly likable character and difficult to warm to to any great extent. When - after Rod Steiger's Komarovsky - the title role is the fourth-best performance you know something's not quite right.
The film looks beautiful, even if in the winter scenes the snow is often unconvincing and the lack of visible breath from the actors betrays the fact they're not at all cold. The score is suitably sweeping, lush and epic. But great photography and music don't necessarily make a great film. It seems too reserved, even making allowances for the nature of the characters and their circumstances. Zhivago and Lara spend far too much time apart to ever fully convince as lovers.
The last act drags just a little and the fact that the story relies too heavily upon highly improbable coincidences becomes more apparent, but the film certainly doesn't feel like its three-and-a-quarter hours.
It's a very, very good film. It's up there among the all-time great romantic epics but it's definitely in the second tier. There's nothing fatal about any of its flaws, but there are enough significant ones to keep it from being truly great.