MovieChat Forums > Doctor Zhivago (1965) Discussion > What's the allure of this?

What's the allure of this?

posted 8 years ago by DeepFriedJello
9 replies | jump to latest

Seriously, the storyline reads like a soap opera. Who's sleeping with their mothers lover, and cheating on their wife. I know this is highly acclaimed, and may be technically fantastic, but over 3 hours of adulterous behavior isn't the least appealing. I recall sleeping in the back of the car with my brothers when my parents saw it at the drive-in in the 60's. I would much prefer an epic about the Bolshevik revolution than a sick love story. Would this be considered a sappy chick-flick?
That said, I never cared to see Gone with the Wind for the same reason, thinking it was just a stuck-up romance film with a bad word in it (damn). When I finally saw it I was truly impressed and taken aback.
Is it possible that Dr. Z has any redeeming value that I would enjoy? Is there more to it than some creepy relationships? I know I would enjoy the cinematography and location shots, but what else is there?

[–] tmf_scipio 8 years ago

Well, War and Peace is just one big soap opera too.

To me, this is a beautifully shot movie about a few people who lived through the failed revolution of 1905, and the revolution of 1917, and subsequent bolshevik revolution in October 1917.

Hitler! C'mon, I'll buy you a glass of lemonade.

[–] gorgsharpy 8 years ago

It's a personal and tragical tale of a man who cannot choose between two women.

[–] JaneThree 8 years ago

I was allowed to watch it as a child because it was a classic. I was immediately taken with Geraldine Chaplin's Tanya, felt no chemistry between Julie Christie and Omar Shariff, and did not understand how come I was supposed to root for them. Also was distracted by Christie's hair. Of course I also hated Christie's relationship with the intellectual revolutionary guy AND the rapist guy, but Omar Shariff's relationship with Christie was not rootable, and the romantic interlude did nothing for me. The movie also conveniently got the wife out of the way while implicitly giving her approval to Lara/Yuri.

I recalled all of these impressions because I watched it later as an adult, and had the same reactions. I've since realized that in the 1960s-1970s movies and even theatre were exploring the idea that marriage was a suffocating social convention. There was lots of material out there where the central relationship was adulterous, and the writing never had to justify it because were were to assume that marriage was a state that stifled people. I think these films were a reaction to the 1950s, where marriage was maybe more of a trap than it was later on. Adultery today now seems meaner, because divorce is common.

[–] gorgsharpy 8 years ago

Of course there is this "age of innocence"-like marriage angle to Dr Zhivago but it's more than that. It's a notion of forever pendulling between two points of desire, of never being able to choose - an existentistic bankruptcy that borders on the ecstatic ability to keep on loving freshly.

[–] the_departed94 8 years ago

Honestly I think the most enticing thing about the film is just to see another big screen epic directed by David Lean, scored by Maurice Jarre. etc.

We were lucky to just have Lawrence of Arabia but we got other epic's like this that while not be as good as "Lawrence" (very few films are) it's sheer scale and ambition is what attracts me to the film. The actual story is a tertiary interest.

[–] DeepFriedJello 8 years ago

Thanks all who replied to this. I really should see it sometime, and possibly be impressed.

[–] DMarkwick 8 years ago

I think the idea is that it is in a way about those events, but told via the close-in focus of people's actual lives, how events control and shape them. Like how Titanic was about Rose & Jack, but set against a larger story and how the larger story drove the outcomes.

[–] spencerc2217 8 years ago

I think this movie is highly overrated. Way overblown. Great production values with labored storytelling. And sappy music. In my opinion Lean's best films are from the forties, Brief Encounter and Great Expectations. These put his painstaking craftsmanship to its best advantage. think his last really good film was Summertime with Hepburn and, at the end, Passage to India. I know I wil be reviled for this but I find his four epics ending with Ryan's Daughter, as I wrote above, over baked and overblown. I agree with George Cukor who said of Lawrence of Arabia it never seemed to go anywhere.

[–] Bowserb46 8 years ago

Like some other historical novels, this used a pop storyline to lighten up an otherwise serious and grim modern history of Russia. The screenplay made the lightweight love story into the main plot. In short, a great historical novel became an overlong Lifetime movie with high budget sets.