Doctor Zhivago.

Review #1421: Doctor Zhivago.

Cast: 
Omar Sharif (Dr. Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago), Julie Christie (Lara Antipova), Geraldine Chaplin (Tonya Gromeko), Rod Steiger (Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky), Alec Guinness (Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago), Tom Courtenay (Pavel "Pasha" Antipov / Strelnikov), Siobhán McKenna (Anna Gromeko), Ralph Richardson (Alexander Maximovich Gromeko), Rita Tushingham (Tanya Komarova), Jeffrey Rockland (Sasha), Bernard Kay (Kuril), and Klaus Kinski (Kostoyed Amoursky) Directed by David Lean (#286 - Lawrence of Arabia)

Review: 
"Secrets are what you confide to people in the dark. I think one of the things we've lost in the cinema is intimacy. Now you see appalling things happening and high excitement, but you rarely get right into people."

If one needed to view an epic drama or romance, one could find a great argument to be made for David Lean. He was born in England to Quaker parents; he had his first experience with watching cinema at thirteen, and receiving a Brownie camera as a gift from his uncle served as a good hobby for him. He found work as an apprentice in his father's accountancy firm, but he found himself more interested in the cinema, and this led to him joining Gaumont Studios in 1927. He served in various roles for the studio such as tea and clapper boy and eventually cutting room assistant. Over the next few years, he would become chief editor at Gaumont British News before shifting to editor on film in 1939. Three years later, playwright Noël Coward gave him a chance to direct with him with the war film In Which We Serve (1942), which served him well in directing further films (which he would do through forming Cineguild Productions with cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, which lasted from 1944 to 1949), with his next six films being adaptation of plays and novels (three of them being works from Coward), which led to noted movies like Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946). A perfectionist with a tendency for autocratic behavior on set, Lean would make sixteen films in a career of 42 years, receiving plenty of attention for works such as Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962, which like this film was written by Robert Bolt), and his final work A Passage to India (1984, which he also wrote and edited).

The film was based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak, a poet whose work is noted for its long and intricate structure that span over forty years against the backdrop of an evolving Russia in the 20th century (with the poet's views on said transition being the reason for the Soviet Union opposing its publication), and the controversy over the novel meant that it could not be filmed in Russia, with a majority of filming instead being in Spain. The film runs at 200 minutes (after an original length of 197 and a restoration that occurred in the late 1990s) with the intent of something intimately romantic and epic. How much the film accomplishes in that regard is up to the viewer, and there have been plenty who encountered it, since it ranks as one of the highest grossing films of its era (behind fellow 1965 film The Sound of Music), and this film won Academy Awards in art direction, cinematography, screenplay, costume design and score. All of this window-dressing for a film held n some ways as a classic is me trying to figure out exactly why the actual experience for me was just fine at best. Can it be possible to make something that has scope and ambition to tell a long story and yet seem lacking in making a romance epic whole? The words seem to be there, and there is plenty of interesting scenery and set design to go around with acting that is generally convincing, but it doesn't seem as great as it wants to portray itself. It has a sappy seductive power that can either sweep you off your feet or make you struggle to not roll your eyes in where it (theoretically) wants to go. Thrust into a title role is Sharif, an Egyptian actor of numerous British and American productions that had approached Lean about a supporting role but ended up being cast as the lead by Lean. His performance comes off decent, where his expressive eyes seem to try and hide a passive character that has bare chemistry with everything that happens to occur around him. Christie, a British actress who rose to prominence through films like this and Darling (1965), proves adept in generating passion through chemistry with Sharif that gradually builds to something halfway meaningful, a soap opera that mutates itself into trying to be taken seriously. Chaplin, a dancer-turned-model-turned actress in her English-language debut, can only do so much with a doormat type of character, one who generates far more interest in her kindness than the others who is doomed to be the first wheel to fall off the proverbial romantic vehicle. Of the whole cast, it is method icon of volatility in Steiger that proves most interesting, as he commands your attention with his intimidating nature that serves the film well in starting and ending things without becoming too much in blustering for the sake of it. It is nice to see Guinness from time to time, even when serving as a framing device for everything around him. Courtenay rounds things out with composed rebelliousness that serves him well from time to time.

There are tough choices to make for a film like this, and in some ways the film carries those dilemmas with a right touch and other times with a heavy-handed approach. It is like a piece of art that has plenty of color and lines but seems to be missing that central focus to bring it all completely together. It proves no wonder why no one has tried to make a second theatrical adaptation of this work: For one thing, television seems more adept in covering such an expansive work like this, and it might very well be folly to think one can top the highs generated by a film as iconic as this one is - regardless of how it might land for folks like me. It is immensely flawed, but it is nevertheless something to consider as a film for the 1960s worth pondering over, whether for its sweeping images or its gestures of romance that come together for a spectacle that can help lend inspiration to audiences then as before, if one has the patience and understanding for it.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.