Doctor Zhivago | | Cast : | Omar Sharif, Julie Christie | | Director : | David Lean | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | December 22, 1965 | | DVD Released Date : | September 24, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 06, 2005 | | Summary | My How Time Flies | Content
 | Having just viewed this movie for the first time since I saw it in the theatre as a young teenager, it certainly is not the boring, snow-covered insipid political love story I remember. Lesson learned - when you're a teenager you think you know everything; when you're in your 50's, you realise how silly and foolish you were in your youth.
This is a great film. David Lean was truly the master of the epic genre. He managed to focus on the personal stories of 3 people while the "epic" serves as the backdrop - genius! And, an epic it is - will all the bells and whistles. However, one finds oneself so engrossed in the storyline that the cast of thousands; hundreds of horses; incredible scenery seem mere props.
A very young Julie Christie steals this film. Everyone else, including the good doctor himself, seems like a supporting player to her incredible Lara. Other actresses of her age(I believe she was 22 or 23 when this film was made) would have wilted next to the likes of Rod Steiger and Omar Shariff but not Ms. Christie. She chews them up and spits them out before we're a half hour into this 3-hour epic. It's almost tragic that her subsequent body of work is so erratic and beneath her talent level. With her Oscar-winning performance in "Darling" and this film being released the same year, she really had no place to go but down. T'is a pity she's reduced to cameo roles, voice-overs and supporting bit parts these days.
If you saw this film before and didn't like it, you owe it to yourself to watch it again. It's quite remarable.
That said, I still find that insipid, intrusive and cloying "Lara's Theme" as annoying as I did as a teenager. Some things never change :) |
| Rating | | | Date | August 01, 2005 | | Summary | Fantastic | Content
| The movie was great & I am glad that I purchased it. I compared the prices to a few other stores and I found that this one was the cheapest. I would recommend it to anyone! |
| Rating | | | Date | July 03, 2005 | | Summary | "More of your high-minded lunacy?" | Content
| DR. ZHIVAGO is David Lean's magnum opus film adaptation of Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning semi-autobiographical novel of the same name (Pasternak declined accepting after the authorities told him that if he went to Oslo he could never return to the U.S.S.R.).
Lean's production seems rather more perfectly realized than the book (at least the English translation) despite its dangerous swerves to the edge of soap operatics. Fortunately, Lean's tight direction keeps the film from ever going over that edge.
A true epic from the era of epics, the sweep of DR. ZHIVAGO is as vast and complex as Russia and the Revolution itself. Lean captures the street scenes of "Bread and Land" demonstrations perfectly (according to one who was there), and imbues his characterizations with a depth and sensitivity not often seen on film.
The film's protagonist, young Dr. Yuri Zhivago, a noted physician and poet, finds his bourgoise life turned topsy-turvy by first the Great War and then by the Revolution. The greater external crisis of his time is matched by a personal crisis of equal internal dimensions, as he is torn between his two life's loves, his devoted wife Tonya (played by Charlie Chaplin's daughter, Geraldine), and Larissa Antipova (the beautiful Julie Christie), the wife of the hidebound, heartless Bolshevik, Strelnikov (Tom Courtenay).
Lean performs a nearly impossible task, capturing the mental landscape of a poet through a series of scenic cutaways that would have seemed ridiculous in the hands of another filmmaker.
Zhivago himself (played by Omar Sharif) is a sensitive, dewy-eyed man who is never able to surrender his personal life or his art to the Revolution. As seen through Zhivago's eyes, the Revolution appears coarse and impermanent. Although primarily a love story (Zhivago is Pasternak and there was a real "Lara" by the name of Olga), the Soviet authorities could never tolerate Dr. Zhivago's vision, and branded the book politically subversive. The humorless self-importance of the "New" Russians is indictment enough for an era.
Made in the days before CGI, the fifty thousand extras in this film actually are fifty thousand extras, and the sets are fully-realized buildings. An early reviewer criticized the "jack-built sets" (which theater did he walk into?); the incredible ice palace at Varykino has attained a kind of film immortality. So has the score, highlighted by the dramatic and romantic "Lara's Theme."
Excellent supporting roles are played by Rod Steiger as the amoral but pragmatically principled Komarovsky, Siobhan McKenna and Sir Ralph Richardson as the Gromykos, and Sir Alec Guinness as General Yevgraf Zhivago, Yuri's half-brother whose filial devotion is the underpinning of the entire film.
Films simply aren't made this way anymore. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 23, 2005 | | Summary | What Filmmaking and Acting Should Be | Content
| Doctor Zhivago remains one of the greatest examples of the epic cinematic tradition. Whether or not the film managed to stay true to the vast sweep of Pasternak's book is a question I'll leave to others. I watched the film again recently and was pulled back into that poetic world and battered by the vicissitudes of fate which David Lean so expertly captures.
Lean began his career in film as an editor and his ability to juxtapose scenes to great dramatic effect is evident here as it is in all of his films (i.e. the moment in Lean's greatest work, Lawrence of Arabia, when Peter O' Toole blows out a match and Lean makes the brilliant cut to the sun sinking over the undulating desert.)
Omar Sharif plays Yuri Zhivago, a highly sensitive, deeply emotional man whose journey through a life of suffering and longing begins when his beloved mother dies. We see her only as a pale corpse about to be buried in the Russian Orthodox burial rite. Even in his grief, the child Yuri (played by Omar Sherif's son Tarek) shows the sensibility that characterizes him throughout his difficult life and makes him a great poet. Looking away from the grave for a moment toward the trees trembling in the cold wind he is uplifted. We hear, for the first time, the beautiful "Lara's Theme" that represents hope, love and the strange beauty inherent in life.
A great and complicated story of love, war, riches-to-rags, revolution and a bit of mystery plays out from there. Yuri becomes a doctor, gets married to Tonia, falls in love with the exquisite but sullied Lara, is conscripted into service in the Russian army, loves, loses love, loves again, writes poetry and ultimately lives a full but melancholy life. You must see the film because no review can do it justice.
The actors in Doctor Zhivago: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Tom Courtenay and the incomparable Rod Steiger make up what can truly be called an All-Star Cast, unlike the no-talent cardboard cut-outs that pass for screen stars today. This film should be a must for any aspiring actor and I hope to God that they get extremely intimidated and think twice about what it is to really be able to ACT.
The actors are all in their prime here. Julie Christie is breathtakingly beautiful, Omar Sharif's eyes express more longing than any actor before or since. Alec Guinness is a master of nuance and understatement and Rod Steiger steals every scene he is in with his astonishing performance. Above all, David Lean shows his mastery of film and storytelling with yet another piece of classic, poetic cinema. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 13, 2005 | | Summary | A Cinematic Masterpiece | Content
| As a side, this movie deserves more than 5 stars.
This movie is without a doubt one of the best movies directed by David Lean, at a tie with Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and is one of the best movies of all time. Omar Sharif does a fantastic job as the quiet Dr. Zhivago. He doesn't say much throughout the movie, as the events are almost seen through his eyes. Lara, played by Julie Christie, was such an interesting character, as well. The two were so much in love, but yet so deeply pulled apart and kept away from each other, and the sense of longing pulled to you with the beautifully composed Lara's Theme. The genius of Boris Pasternak is so vividly revealed through this classic retelling of this story that you'd think he had a hand in the film's direction and production. Rod Steiger gives a magnificent performance as Komarovsky, as you develop a hatred for him in the beginning but a pity for him in the end, and a sense of the good he has done for Lara and Zhivago. A story told through flashback, you get a magnificent picture of the pain he's suffered through life, and the unspeakable joy. Truly a cinematic classic that will be remembered through the ages as a great work of art more so than a film. |
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