Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I’m a sucker for historical epics, but David Lean’s Dr. Zhicago is a key example as to why they went out of style for a few decades. It’s got a lot going for it: romance, recurring themes musically and story-wise, a nice-looking cast, a story set against the backdrop of the Bolshevik Revolution. What could go wrong? A LOT.

The Story
The incomparable and sadly underused (in this movie at least) Alec Guiness is the mysterious and somewhat ominous General Zhivago who brings in a young woman Tonya in for questioning. After asking about her parentage, he begins to tell her a story of his half brother, Yuri.

Dr. Yuri Zhivago, played by Omar Sharif, is a romantic poetic doctor. He has dreams of helping the sick and ill as he writes his poetry. Although married to his wife Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) and with a son, Zhivago doesn’t seem content. He’s still very dreamy and not really here in every sense of the word.

He keeps running into Lara (Julie Christie), a beautiful young seamstress who accompanies her “uncle” Viktor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger) to society functions. For some reason, Zhivago falls in love with her, personally I think he falls in love with the idea of her.

The story then follows their journey together, after the fall of czar and the resulting exile of the upper classes of Russian society. Zhivago, Tonya, their son and his adoptive father Alexander (Ralph Richardson) move out into the countryside and become farmers, although Zhivago remains torn between his marriage and his love for Lara.

To complicate matters, there’s a mysterious Strelnikov, who’s connection to Zhivago, Lara and the Revolution is not quite clear for sometime. Like a ghost, Strelnikov comes to defenseless villages and towns, destroying them because of their supposed allegiances.

My Thoughts
Unfortunately, the movie really slows down after the Revolution. At 197 minutes, I really don’t know what Lean was thinking. There are many points in the movie where the audience is treated to long musical montages of “Lara’s Theme” and looking at fields of flowers or grass or Zhivago staring dreamily out a window. I was quite ready to break the DVD after I heard “Lara’s Theme” for the fourth time, accompanied by a field of flowers.

There's nothing really wrong with the script or the actors, it's just that they can't do much if the director insists on looking at flowers instead.

There’s nothing wrong with historical epics, but there’s something very wrong with epics that start out really well, only to grind to a halt so we can hear the heroine’s theme song being played over…and over…and over.

Supposedly the movie deviates very much from the book, following the usual convention that the movie is almost always worse than the book. That said, it won an Oscar for the adaptation to screen, and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director.

Karmorovsky: There's another kind. Not high-minded, not pure, but alive. Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind.

Komarovsky: There are two kinds of men and only two. And that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He's the kind of man the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women. Do you understand?

Gromeko: Good marriages are made in heaven... or some such place

Trivia: Sharif’s son Tarek plays the young Zhivago in the beginning of the movie. And yes, they resemble each other, but unfortunately the acting genes weren’t passed on…or hadn’t kicked in at the time.

Rated PG-13 for “mature themes”, but I think only older teens or those with a special interest in Russian history will be interested.


Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older