Review of Doctor Zhivago (1965) by Bugi P — 07 Apr 2011

The problem with seeing a film 46 years after it was released is that all of the oblique references you've had of it --- the theme music, the snow, the fur! --- all of them feel much different now than they would have way back when. This sweeping epic set in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution is a product of its time. It's melodramatic, stagey, silly, often heavy-handed, unevenly acted, overly scored, and ends with a whimper, yet...I was totally immersed in it from start to finish.

When people say, "they don't make them like that anymore", DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is a definitive example. Behold the Russian characters speaking with proper English accents! Gaze adoringly at all of the little children with their creepily angelic line deliveries! Get swept away by the classic David Lean wide shots and the fur blowing perfectly over Julie Christie's perfect features!

What sets this film apart from the usual epics is that most have a love triangle as their central story. Here, we have a love quadrangle, which complicates matters and kept me interested. Add Rod Steiger to the mix, and it's really a 5-way orgy!

Despite the sanitized technicolor splendor of it all, somehow, I managed to feel the hideousness of the times. Desperate people suffering under government oppression are presented with such varying reactions to it - from the emotionally shut-down (and wonderful) Tom Courtenay, to the power hungry Rod Steiger (hamming it up as only he knew how), to the anguished Omar Sharif (with the digitally restored print it became obvious that his eyes were horribly bloodshot throughout production - man there were some long hours put into making this one!).

The language of this type of cinema has vanished and been replaced with either a docu-reality aesthetic or hyper-CGI-action. We're no longer used to seeing heightened and studio-bound drama anymore, so we tend to laugh at its excesses:

- Sharif and Christie riding a carriage across the tundra should have been holy hell, but they make it look fun.

- When a main character is shot, we see their glasses fall to the ground instead of the graphic blood spattering. This heavy symbolism gets a laugh now, but back then, I'm sure it had an impact.

- When Sharif returns to Christie after many years apart, he is covered in snow and ice so overdone, it looks like someone had a bukkake party on his face.

- The theme song (which I always thought was some sort of Parisian tourist melody) is played so often, that it drives you a little nuts. Back then, it was most likely the most romantic thing anyone had ever heard.

- Nowadays everyone wants blood to look real, but here, when spilled in the Moscow streets during a protest, it looks like Ralph Lauren Hunting Coat Red paint.

- This film is so old-fashioned, it had an Overture and a 15 minute intermission. And the best part is the music sting and shock cut to the INTERMISSION card just as a main character surprisingly reappears. Damn, I wish TITANIC had done that.

Finally, the politics of this film are all over the map. I'm STILL not sure if its pro-communist, capitalist, or just pro-kissing hard and dramatically. The imagery surrounding the communist workers is so striking, I'm gonna go with that. See this film with your next doomed lover!