Holy...

Rating: 1/10 (17 November 2018)

I'm sorry but this movie is pretty horrendous. Not only was I bored out of my mind, there isn't much besides cinematography and set/costume design that's good. Even then, the two positive aspects are very limited.
The movie really likes to skip from one thing to the other from an interview to a funeral to a revolution to romance between Zhivago and Tonya to rape to full-out war to romance between Zhivago and Lara to full-out war again. I have no clue what this movie is trying to portray; it just zips all over the place with no rhyme or reason.
The different pieces of music are very boring and untouching. They refuse to switch between pieces of music: they play Lara's Theme at least 20 times throughout the 200-minute runtime. To make it worse, the second part of the movie has a noticeable lack of music (maybe the first part too). Whenever they play music, it's 90% guaranteed to be Lara's Theme.
I can't really care for these characters at all. Zhivago is given an introduction that is meant to pull the heartstrings but fails pretty bad. Zhivago's mom has just died. We're supposed to feel sad (we even see the body being put in a coffin and buried in the ground), but the audience can't because we get next to nothing of Zhivago's feelings for his mom in this. Additionally, her mom is never brought up again the whole movie except the balalakia which really serves no purpose at all. If this is all the movie has to care for the main character, then it failed on that end.
None of the other characters grow or change in any way really. It's so boring watching these characters do the same antics over and over again. For example, Komarovsky is a jerk when we see him in Part 1, and when it's been 6 years or whatever, he tries to be helpful but is actually a jerk. Shocker.
The set design of the city (I think it was Moscow) was pretty good, but the rest of the sets look as bleak and colorless as the other sets. Don't get me wrong, Russia might have looked that bleak all the time when it was the Soviet Union. But it's so boring to look at the whole movie. And it's 3 hours and 20 minutes long. The costumes are pretty good and generally realistic, I will say that.
The cinematography has some long, complex shots. To mind comes one of the dinner scenes and a sunset when Zhivago and company are on the train (or around there). However, a lot of it is uninspired and features quick cuts. It's not that great to look at.
Speaking of uninspired, the main titles and end titles. The main titles is a very static background of trees. The background changes color a few times, occasionally making the titles font hard to see. The end titles show a waterfall (which means nothing) and a rainbow (which also means nothing) and tries to have the audience be in awe but fails.
I'm not even gonna talk about the romance. It's the same over and over again and is very bland. That's all.
Then we have Alec Guinness. He narrates over the story and that's all he does. He barely has an impact on the story. He's seemingly brought in at random moments to narrate. The worst example is near the end of the first part when Zhivago is recommended the decision to go somewhere else. Alec narrates that he asked some questions and some of Zhivago's answers to those. It could have easily be done without narration: it actually makes the scene less of a mess.
I also noticed Alec narrates only when he's involved. If he's narrating to the girl at the beginning of the movie, wouldn't he narrate more of scenes he's not in since he's telling the story?
For entertainment value, when I put this in my DVD player, I probably paused it 10 times to get up and walk around. For me, it's just better to do that.
All in all, Doctor Zhivago is a mess to say the least. But, if you want to watch this movie and haven't yet, don't let this review stop you.