I’ve never seen the need for an intermission at a 4 hour movie, I can watch those extended cuts of “The Lord of the Rings” all day long and I am still bitter that Richard Attenborough hasn’t released the 11 hour version of “Chaplin” that he allegedly has in his vaults. In other words, I do not see excessive length as a hindrance by any means... unless it is needless.
Back when I was in the newspaper racket, we used to have an expression: “All filler and no killer.” Essentially what this meant was that we had sent an issue to press that filled up several pages with an abundance of content, but we didn’t necessarily have any significant news to report that week so, while we managed to provide the amount of subject matter we were required to, there was nothing particularly outstanding in said subject matter.
Not that “Dr. Zhivago” is not great subject matter- but if it were one hour shorter it would be twice the film that it already is, and without sacrificing any real content. Of course the problem you encounter when you develop a film that is based on a book, as is the case in “Dr. Zhivago” (it was a Boris Pasternak book first) is that you run the risk of insulting the book and its aficionados by tampering with the original work too much. While I will not claim to have even a pedestrian knowledge of the original text, I can say with some level of confidence that extended sequences of silence and heavy reliance on sprawling pans of landscape probably had less to do with bringing printed descriptions to life as much as they were simply director David Lean’s way of throwing in something visually amazing because even he had to assume he was losing the viewer with some of the sections of drawn out dialogue.
The scale of the production is evident in the film’s earliest shots, showing an expansive dam in the process of being built. A young peasant girl is brought in to speak to a clearly decorated European military General, Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness) who is searching for his deceased half-brother Yuri’s (Omar Sharif) long lost illegitimate daughter and suggests that he has reason to believe it is her. Though she is reluctant to hear the General’s story, she agrees to listen.
The film then jumps back in time, establishing a complex and time-spanning flashback mode. While this particular narrative tool is not original or unique, the way it is done is. Rather than being simply shown from the perspective of the person doing the narrating, the events are more all-encompassing thus giving Yevgraf a sort of omnipotent understanding of the events. While he does resurface a few times in certain flashback sequences, he is never prominently featured and in fact doesn’t speak at all in any of the “real-time” scenes; only as a narrator. While this may seem pretty unrealistic and unconventional, it really does help the credibility of his narration; as he is unable to interject any personal editorializing and is just as removed from the action as the rest of us.
The bulk of the narrative takes place during the Russian Revolution which of course was largely concurrent with World War 1, though there is brief reference to the fact that Yuri was abandoned by his father; thus his mother’s death while he is still relatively young essentially orphans him. The only worldly possession she is able to leave Yuri is a balalaika (a Russian stringed instrument that I won’t even pretend to know anything more about, given the fact that the extent of my prior knowledge of them lies in a line from the Scorpions song “Wind of Change”). Yuri’s adoptive father stresses the important of artistic exploration during Yuri’s youth and even encourages the boy’s natural talent in poetry. The concept of inherited talent and artistry is a recurring theme in the film and ties in perfectly with the other dominant theme of family.
These two themes intersect again when Yuri strikes up a courtship with Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), his step-sister by adoption only. Though his true love is his poetry, obligation causes him to follow in his adoptive father’s footsteps and become a surgeon, as this will give him the means to support a family (his plans to marry Tonya are very clearly stated) that he believes his poetry could not provide.
Though his love for Tonya appears to be genuine, Yuri soon crosses paths with a woman named Lara (Julie Christie) when he is called to tend to her mother who has just attempted to commit suicide. Their initial encounter is brief but the two do exchange obvious glances as Yuri tries to save Lara’s mother. This is the first of many chance encounters Yuri and Lara will have over the next several years. The events leading up to the suicide attempt give us a significant background on Lara’s character; and it is not very flattering.
Lara is a very flawed woman. She is engaged to a Soviet revolutionary who is maimed in the process of protesting on behalf of his cause. Her subsequent affair with Komarovsky, a powerful and sadistic lawyer (who is also implied to be involved with Lara’s mother) really speaks to her character in a number of ways. Firstly, the embarrassment to her mother that drives her to suicide, but even more to the point is the suggestion that her attraction to her own fiancé is lessened given his scarred face. While this is never outwardly stated, there is nothing that happens in their relationship to imply any other reason she would cheat. While Komarovsky does turn out to be a manipulative rapist, Lara appears to initially enter into their affair totally willingly.
Lara marries the man she cheated on anyway, he is declared Missing in Action in the war and she (in a rare showing of nobility) becomes a war nurse hoping to seek him out. What she ends up finding is Yuri, again. The two set up a field-expedient hospital and spend the remainder of the war saving lives and silently strengthening their bond. Though they each return to their own separate lives after Russia pulls out of World War 1 they never stop pining over each other. This is significantly more deplorable on Yuri’s part, as he goes back to Tonya, their children and her father. Despite the innumerable debt Yuri owes Tonya’s family, he still actively seeks Lara out in order to pursue an affair with her that he brazenly makes little effort to conceal.
”Wouldn't it have been lovely if we'd met before?” (Lara, “Dr. Zhivago”)
Years later, after all the main characters have (again) been separated, reunited and separated again, Yuri escapes from forced servitude by Communist sympathizers to discover that Tonya and the family have fled to Paris. Tonya also acknowledges in a letter to Yuri that she knows of the affair and genuinely likes Lara, thus making the loss of her husband to her easier to take.
Easily the most breathtaking scene in the entire film (or perhaps any film ever for that matter) occurs when Yuri and Lara seek refuge in the sprawling former home of Tonya’s father that has been seized by the State and since left derelict. The interior and exterior of the home has become blanketed in ice, giving it the appearance of being crystalline. This effect is only enhanced by the opulent architecture and décor of the palace. Overcome with inspiration Yuri furiously dives back into his poetry, writing a series referred to as “The Lara Poems.”
His poems, as well as the counter-revolutionary overtones they bear cause Yuri to fall from favor politically in Russia, but the citizens love them, making Yuri something of a celebrity. However, even after having accomplished every other aim in his life, he still cannot have Lara, who has remarried a Russian officer who has also wound up in the bad graces of the Soviet State and must now go into exile. Despite success as a surgeon and a poet, Yuri finds himself hopeless for the first time and his life reflects this. With Lara entirely out of his reach he loses all will to succeed or even survive. He is a vagrant when he arrives in Moscow where his half-brother has gotten him a job. Once there, he sees Lara on a train and chases after her. She does not notice him and he dies in the street apparently of a heart attack before he is able to be reunited with her. Omar Sharif’s middle-of-the-street heart attack is the worst onscreen death this side of Yoda’s in “Return of the Jedi” and thus does not gut the viewer the way a stellar performance could have.
Yuri’s influence is silently stated by the large turnout for his funeral. It is here that Yevgraf learns from Lara of the existence of her and Yuri’s daughter, though she has resigned herself to the likelihood that the child is long dead given the fact that they had been separated in the chaos of Revolution. In spite of the deaths of both Yuri and eventually Lara, Yevgraf makes it his personal crusade to find the long-lost daughter and hence the story is all tied up with the meeting of the peasant girl at the dam. Yevgraf is convinces she is his long-lost niece but the girl all but refuses to believe it.
The film’s end sort of cheats the viewer out of the option of getting to decide if the girl is or isn’t Yuri and Lara’s child. For starters, he name is “coincidentally” Tonya, a resurfacing of the repeated-to-death theme of the small worldliness and repeated crossing of paths; so much so now that she even has to share the name of someone who represents something of a bridge to Yuri. Also, Yevgraf notices that she carries a balalaika and is proficient in the instrument, all but cementing a third-generation lineage connected to that particular instrument and a genetic gift of artistry. The only thing that could have made this ending more corny would have been if it were actually somehow Yuri’s balalaika.
As hard as I am on this film, I didn’t hate it; there were just several things I didn’t like about it. Technically and artistically it is flawless- so much so that there are not only no wasted shots, but if anything way too many shots. Content is greatly sacrificed for logic or depth of characters. Not only is the constant crossing of paths of so few people in such vast expanses excessive, it is ridiculous. Not unlike “Forrest Gump” good pieces of symbolism and thematic devices are forced down the viewer’s throat so much I actually ended up resenting them.
That said my biggest problem with “Dr. Zhivago” is the seemingly constant immoral activity of the main protagonists. Infidelity in cinema does not have to be sleazy, as is evident in such works as “A Place in the Sun” and “Bringing up Baby” but in the case of this film it is just shameful. Be it Lara’s willingness to cheat on her physically scarred fiancé, or any man she is involved with for that matter, but also Yuri’s callous betrayal of a woman as good as Tonya. The only time I feel anything for Lara is when she is raped by her former lover.
I’ve said many a time that I appreciate flawed protagonists more than goody-two-shoes’ but even I have to draw the line at a woman who consciously enters into an affair with a guy who was (again, implied) to have been involved with her mother. Or a man who takes “the other woman” to his wife’s family home to reside, granted abandoned but skeevy nonetheless. Yuri and Lara’s love is not beautiful and unfortunate like Spencer Tracy’s and Katharine Hepburn’s, it is more like Hugh Grant and Divine Brown’s. Even Tonya, who is a tragic victim, ends up being unlikeable and unrealistic due to her almost accepting attitude towards Yuri’s affair.
There is just so much narrative in this film and so many subplots in this film that I almost get the feeling that the cinematography was done so absurdly well simply to keep the viewer’s attention. And yet, in spite of all the time I am forced to spend with these people, I have no emotional attachment to them the way I do the characters in a film like “Shane” or “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Not only do I not tear up at their deaths like I do Catherine and Heathcliff’s in “Wuthering Heights” I just don’t care at all. Because of this, David Lean inundates us with gorgeous outdoor shots and perfectly designed sets; the presentation is very pretty, but keep in mind “Waterwold” had great special effects too.
If you feel the uncontrollable urge to watch a nearly 4 hour love story set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, I would suggest “Reds” instead. You feel a real connection to those characters, the performances are far superior to those in “Zhivago” and the characters are all based on real people. Sure it is nowhere near as neatly wrapped as “Dr. Zhivago” but sometimes in movies heart and soul take precedence over hair and makeup.
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