Definitely an achievement in epic film-making

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2007)

The strength of this movie, besides its wonderful handling of the historic sweep and scope of the production, is the strong storytelling. Some complain that it is not a fair representation of the novel. This is true. The novel tells a substantially different, more complicated story, and Lean and Bolt have developed their own story to tell, using the Pasternak novel as a general framework.
Shariff, Christie, Steiger, Guinness, Courteney, Richardson, Chaplin--great performers all, and their talents are well-utilized here. Scenery, sets, art direction, sets, costumes, music, action scenes, are at the highest standards.
What I appreciated with the film (and over the years I have had multiple viewings) are some of the little things: the use of trains, over and over, as symbols of change and transition; Zhivago's habit of gazing up, as if to history, for inspiration or understanding; the scene, for example, of Zhivago, in the sleigh going through the darkened streets of Moscow with Tonia, his betrothed, looking up and seeing the patterns on a window of a single candle melting the ice on the glass--and behind it, the bitter recriminations of another betrothed pair, Sascha and Lara, dealing with Lara's nearly forced affair with the grasping Komerovsky.
The cinematographer's choices are wonderful: the scene of Yuri's dead mother in her coffin, as Yuri the child imagines her; the shot of Lara through the veil that Komerovsky adorns her with; the focus on Lara's eyes as she spots a man she long ago fell in love with but never thought she see again.
Some of the user comments here seem to condemn the film for Zhivago's infidelity, but the film doesn't exactly approve of it either--it just recognizes that sometimes a married person falls in love with someone else, and, under some circumstances, acts on it.
Visually, historically, and narratively, this is a film of achievement and wonder. Its romanticism may have aged a bit, as has some of its techniques, but an enormous amount of thought and art went into its making, and it deserves its classic status.