Another downgrade in the passing of time.

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2003)

I saw this again yesterday and was so disappointed. I wondered what had grabbed me before. I remembered Julie Christie luminous in white fur, Omar Sharif's Golden Retriever eyes, the ice palace, the poetry and this powerful unstoppable romance. This time, I felt it dragging. It just did not hold up to my memory of it at all. Perhaps some movies we are not meant to revisit, their memory is so much more powerful than their now dreary repetition.
Warning - ***minor spoilers***
The great romance now falls a little flat on a third viewing. Geraldine Chaplin, the long suffering wife, is too saintly by far. Rod Steiger's change of heart is too slick and makes no sense. and the ending is so laughable, this whole monumental film boils down to a guy with a heart condition running along a street after a woman he thinks is Lara. And then he dies. We only hear a stanza of the supposedly powerful Lara poems.
Yes the ice palace is wonderful, an awesome spectacle. 6 out of 10. A disappointment.