Review of Doctor Zhivago (1965) by Joby D — 12 May 2008

This one is not one I saw because of Raul. Not his thing, really. I saw this one because of my high school English teacher, Ms. Drury. It was one of her favourites. We watched it when we were supposed to be reading [i]Crime and Punishment[/i]; while there are plenty of books of [i]Crime and Punishment[/i], Ms. Drury preferred [i]Doctor Zhivago[/i]. So there we are. I had such a weird educational experience.

So there's this doctor (Omar Sharif), you see, and his name is Zhivago. But his story is framed by his half-brother (Sir Alec Guinness), also named Zhivago, but Yevgraf and not Yuri. Yevgraf Zhivago is trying to find his brother's child, and he thinks he has. He brings the girl (Rita Tushingham, called "the girl" in the credits), who is a worker in the glorious People's Republic, into an office to tell her his brother's story. This starts with showing her a book of poetry by her supposed father written for her supposed mother. This then segues into the [i]incredibly[/i] long story of Yuri Zhivago, his wife Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), and Lara (Julie Christie). Yuri and Tonya have been betrothed essentially since childhood, and indeed, they marry. But Yuri's life begins entwining with that of the hapless Lara, and eventually, after the revolution, he takes her as his mistress. Many other things happen, but it kind of doesn't matter. What's important is that this is a Great, Sweeping Epic.

And there's the problem. The story seems less important than the epic bits. Also, the filming kind of bothers me--there's all this fuzziness on the lens, as though we are seeing things through some kind of haze, and there are a few shots that are simply laughable, such as Zhivago framed in a circle of . . . I don't know what that's supposed to be. It looked silly, whatever it was. Oh, there's some lovely shots, too, but not enough to make up for the frank tedium.

The story never caught my interest. It goes on for over three hours, but I didn't care. I kept watching because I miss Ms. Drury, and because I was hoping to see what she'd liked about it. However, I kept coming back to the fact that I don't really care about what's going on and Omar Sharif isn't very attractive. Frankly, again, the movie felt like epic for the sake of epic, and what you get from that is a very [i]long[/i] boring story. If it weren't epic, it would be a much shorter boring story, which still isn't good, but it is better. Sometimes, in fact, the act of trimming makes the story better; see several of the works of Charles Dickens. However, there's not enough story here to have trimming matter, unless the film ended up being about an hour long. You see, there are an awful lot of great, sweeping shots of ice-covered vistas or vast steppes or whatever, which pad a movie that does not, I assure you, need padding.

In short, watch at your own risk. Maybe you'll like it; a lot of people seem to. Ms. Drury certainly did. But if my tastes have at all represented yours, I suspect you will dislike [i]Doctor Zhivago[/i], though I don't think you'll hate it as much as some people I know do, either. I can promise you that you'll find several much more boring movies here.