only good as an implementation of a western myth about Russia

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2003)

This film, in my opinion, has very little to do with a book itself and with a country and a time over which it had been written. I guess that it goes in line with what the western people think about Russia, and that is why it was a success. But for me, as a person with Russian background, it appears here too glamorous, there too simple, and somewhere else simply wrong. And of course, it misses the poetry of Boris Pasternak which was the real essence of the story, and the book itself only a lengthy comment. Sorry, but the film felt as a miss. 6 out of 10, only for the effort to make it.