BEFORE: Another long film tonight - clocking in at 3 hours and 17 min. That's a bad sign for any movie that doesn't have either Hobbits or a sinking Titanic in it. Linking from "Doctor Dolittle" (see what I did there?) Peter Bull was also in the 1972 version of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" with Ralph Richardson. (Alternately, Richard Attenborough was also in the 1969 version of "David Copperfield" with Ralph Richardson. Either path gets me to the same place.)
AFTER: Well, I'm going to place this one in the same category as films like "Schindler's List" and "The Killing Fields", and not just because these films are all about various wars. "Doctor Zhivago" is mainly set during the closing days of World War I and then the decline of Tsarist Russia. No, what links these films is the reminder that whatever might be going wrong in our lives, things could always be worse. You can sit in the audience of a theater (or in your living room) and take comfort in the fact that you're not in a German concentration camp, or living in Russia during a harsh winter during the rise of Communism, freezing and starving.
War films in general, they may instill feelings of patriotism or scratch that action-film itch, but more and more I find myself thankful that I've never been in the military, never had any interest in serving in the military, and never been forced to serve in the military. I literally dodged that bullet. That's not to say that any army would want me, I'm more of a support staff, behind-the-scenes kind of guy than a front line, carry this gun and charge up that hill kind of guy.
So there's SOME benefit in watching "Doctor Zhivago" - but that's the flipside of depicting the horrors of war and the scarcity of food and housing during a Moscow winter. For the most part this movie was much too long, much too boring, and much too depressing.
I think some women swear by this movie as an example of a great romance - but I'm not sold on this point. Supposedly Lara was the "great love" of Yuri Zhivago's life. But he was married to another woman, and she was married to another man. How am I supposed to distinguish between all these romances going on in this "love rectangle" - and what makes one "better" or "greater" than the others?
If Zhivago loved Lara so much, why didn't he leave his wife to be with her? It seems to me he was hedging his bets - he had a relationship of convenience with Lara while they were serving at a military hospital together, but I don't think that makes that relationship "better", only easier.
And the flip-side of that is, didn't he affect the relationship with his wife by getting involved with Lara? What sort of a man does that make him? Why is the relationship with his wife somehow regarded as "less than" when compared to the one with Lara? Because he disregarded it so easily? This is one of those chicken vs. egg things, right? Did the relationship falter because he cheated, or did he cheat because it was faltering?
Either way, I don't really regard adultery as romantic, and if that makes me old-fashioned, then so be it. If Zhivago truly wanted to be with Lara, fine, just be honest about it and break off the marriage first. Instead he ended up in a situation where he was probably thinking about the other woman all the time, no matter which one he was with, he wanted to be with the other one. Not cool.
Was it a different time? Sure. Under certain circumstances all things are acceptable. But just because there's a war on and you've been drafted into military service for the Bolsheviks (or whoever), that's no excuse to cheat. At least Lara believed her husband to be dead when she entered into the relationship. But she still knew she was sleeping with a married man, so again, not cool.
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. I know about the fall of the Tsar and all that, but once you get into the difference between communism and socialism, between Bolsheviks and Leninists, I'm kind of lost. Really this seems to be an example of how much bad fortune can come into people's lives, sort of a Russian version of "Les Miserables". I guess maybe I was hoping for more of a Russian version of "Gone With the Wind", but it's just not.
It's an odd coincidence that this week's films have all depicted characters who seem incapable of love - Michelangelo, Doctor Dolittle, and now nearly every Russian citizen in this film. They seem to be a very stern people, these Russians.
Also starring Omar Sharif (last seen in "Hidalgo"), Julie Christie (last seen in "Troy"), Geraldine Chaplin (last seen in "The Impossible"), Rod Steiger (last seen in "In the Heat of the Night"), Alec Guinness (last seen in "The Scapegoat"), Klaus Kinski.
RATING: 3 out of 10 balalaikas
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