The Good & Bad Of Dr. Zhivago

Rating: 6/10 (14 March 2006)

I would just give "fair-at-best" points for the story; but high marks for the cinematography and the sets. Scenery-wise, I don't think I've ever seen winter with a lot of snow and ice portrayed so beautifully. The colors in here are classy, especially the white and black with red. The train scenes are beautiful, too.
I wish I could be as complimentary when it came to the story, but I can't. It's just too slow, especially the first hour which is stupid since you want to hook viewers, not turn them off early on in a 3-hour film! It gets better as it goes along, but then sags a bit near the end and finishes on a somewhat sad note. It's pretty sad, too, when the two main lovers, the "good guys" of the movie, are both cheating on their spouses. Well, it's the mid-60s so that was the beginning of the film world giving us anti-heroes with little in the way of ethics.
The movie shows the beginnings of a very bleak period for the Russian people as the Communist Party takes over. The revolutionaries thought it would be a "worker's state," a government "of the people." However, the average citizen lost their freedoms and many of them greatly suffered. In fact, in this film, all the characters in the story with the exception of Alec Guiness, were victims of the oppressive Communist regime. How quickly naive people forget this history lesson, so kudos to the film for pointing this out.