Great movie

Rating: Null/10 (28 March 2005)

David Lean's sweeping epic and his second best film after Laurence of Arabia. Great performances all the way and exquisite cinematography and music. Lean handles the vast canvas admirably well.
Based on Boris Pasternak's famous novel, this is a thinly veiled criticism of the Bolshevik revolution and its aftermath under the entertaining and touching guise of a love affair between the film's two leads - Omar Shariff's Dr Yuri Zhivago and Julie Christie's Lara. Indeed theirs is one of the great love affairs in the history of cinema. But herein too lies one of only two weaknesses in this movie. The sentimentality between the two leads is so overt that on repeated viewing it tends to jar a bit. The second weakness is the ending. It is contrived and in no way adds to the film positively. Perhaps Lean was getting affected by the very sentimentality that he helped create.
The supporting cast feature some great actors. Alec Guiness as the important Bolshevik official who is also Yuri's half-brother, Geraldine Chaplin as Yuri's understanding wife (whose attitudes some of us may dearly wish for in our girlfriends or wives!), Tom Courtenay as Lara's sensitive husband whose driven over the edge by the momentous events of the revolution, and most of all Rod Steiger as Lara's family friend, a complex character who is manipulative and predatory but not altogether a bad man. Steiger nearly steals the film with his performance - no mean achievement as a support player in a 'epic' movie.
Maurice Jarre's celebrated score heightens the emotions aroused by the powerful story and the cinematography is wonderful. The film is so overflowing with wonderful shots and colour that sometimes you expect it to burst on screen.
What more to say except that Shariff and Christie too are very good in one of the great epics in movie history. Watch this.