★ 7 / 10
David Lean has assembled an excellent cast and
CinemaSerf
David Lean has assembled an excellent cast and together with Maurice Jarre's memorable score and some sweeping cinematography from Freddie Young does…
David Lean has assembled an excellent cast and together with Maurice Jarre's memorable score and some sweeping cinematography from Freddie Young does considerable justice to the lengthy Pasternak tale of "Yuri" - a Russian physician (Omar Sharif). Alec Guinness, now a General in the Soviet army, takes on the mantle of narrator - using the expertly innocent Rita Tushingham as the conduit for the flashbacks - and gradually we discover that it's all a bit internecine at the start. "Yuri" falls in love with the enigmatic "Lara" (Julie Christie) who just happens to be the love interest for "Komarovsky" (Rod Steiger) who would sell his own mother, he is certainly cheating on her's. Frustrated on that front, he ends up marrying his own cousin "Tonya" (Geraldine Chaplin) but with the end of the Great war looming and the October Revolution subsequently reducing the country to war-torn chaos, nothing is simple as families are split asunder trying to flee the guns and bullets. It turns out that "Lara" ended up marrying Communist big-wig "Pasha" (Tom Courtenay) but the war put paid to that relationship and when "Yuri" discovers this he wonders what might have been! This is a collection of love stories. Love for people, for their country, for a cause - and Lean manages to weave the complexities of the themes without bogging us down in doctrine or too much brutally. We know all of that is going on, but Robert Bolt's inspired screenplay drip feeds us the politics in an eminently appetising fashion whilst ensuring the human stories prevail. The vast expanses of Russia - especially as seen during their train journeys - are impressive, chilling, and allow us a respite from the constant barrage of dialogue that is usually pretty essential in enabling us to follow the plot. If you ever get the chance to sit for three hours and watch this on big screen then take it. This is cinema at it's more powerful and the sheer logistics of mass participation, mass transportation and glorious photography - without a computer to be had - is certainly worth sitting through as this epic washes over you.
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★ 8 / 10
For once, I agree with the film's summary rating
thomas196x2000
As much as I love cinema, it comes as a shock to me that I never sat down and watched this film. I was very young when it came out, my parents saw it and quite…
As much as I love cinema, it comes as a shock to me that I never sat down and watched this film. I was very young when it came out, my parents saw it and quite liked it, and I remember them buying the stereo record soundtrack, with details of the film and pictures of the cast, and reading it in detail. Still, the thought of sitting down and watching the whole movie, of what appeared to be cold, dark, alien Russia, was of no interest to me. However, I finally watched it a half century plus since it came out. I also read both current and contemporary critical ratings of the film, and could not be in greater disagreement with most of them.
This is a great movie. It is long. It is memorable. But it is neither a soap opera nor foolish. It is not a documentary of Russia in WW1 and then going communist. It is a life and love story against a backdrop of these things. Critics should accept what a movie is about, rather than what they wish it were about.
A movie like this, like all epics, gets a chance to show detail and immerse you in the environment. I never felt so chilled, and so bothered by the wind--all in my head--as during watching this film. In that way, actually feeling like you were there, has only been as realized for me in one other film, "The Last Picture Show", where the feel of chill and desolation in that movie is pervasive.
All performances are great, don't let the idiots tell you otherwise. I read that many felt the Sharif was wrong, or expressionless. Sorry, but that is his character. He is trying to be a professional physician, and keep the appropriate facade in the face of changes that are absolutely surreal. Christie possesses the kind of visual magnetism that makes the infatuation of Zhivago plausible. Rod Steiger, who is guilty of preposterous performances in other films, hits the keys of his performance so perfectly you never disbelieve him. Lesser actors would have just made him the perverted rapist that he is, but nothing more to add to the dynamics of his personality. Courtney as high-minded, full of foolishness, and in the end, blinded by frustration and I believe a touch of madness.
Another thing I found splendid about this film was how it illuminated how evil, twisted, and preposterous the scheme of communism truly is. In this film, and of course in history, all the wealth of the rich is removed, and redistributed. This fixes nothing. What it does allow for, in its BS concepts that all men are the same and are all "comrades", is that you don't rise due to merit, you rise because of who you know. The movie time and again shows complete idiots in charge of things...the "managers" of the old Zhivago house who have converted into mass housing for the jealous poor who hate Zhivago and his family. They couldn't be more useless. The leaders of various combat units. The guy who tells people on the disgusting train about the "features" of the accommodations. Yes, in communist countries, the cream never does rise to the top. The working class does whatever is told, just for the benefit of the scraps and their survival. Lara at one point states something like "it's a horrible time to be alive"....and nothing is closer to the truth than that.
Again, not documentary or a wartime story, but its concepts and truths are right there.
The production, of course, top notch. Watch it, take a break or two and soak it all up. It is a special kind of movie, back when they made such a thing.
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80%
TOMATOMETER
· 46 reviews
88%
AUDIENCE
· 25K ratings
7.9/10
88.4K
•••
4K for this masterpiece would be fine.