very good, but not great

Rating: 8/10 (28 November 2011)

This is a very good movie despite it not always being much interesting. It's like a big expansive painting stretching across the wall where you can admire and even love certain small things about it - Rod Steiger's electrifying performance, Klaus Kinski's ten minutes locked on a train using nothing but his eyes, a scene with Alec Guiness' narration that is like narration having a conversation with a character in a room (when he's talking to his half-brother, or reminiscing about it) which I found really fascinating, and some of the photography is wonderful - though on the whole it's lacking a certain something.
Doctor Zhivago is pretty to look at, of course, and yet a little dull at its core (a love triangle should have just a little more 'umph' to it. And maybe it does, but I didn't feel it on the first viewing). Not to mention since its release the also epic 'Reds' by Warren Beatty took on history and romance in a much more fascinating package. If you're in the right romantic mood it may hit just the right spot (certainly that love theme by Maurice Jarre, purportedly inspired by a weekend of love-making the composer had with his wife). But among the director's works, it's not one of his best.