"What happens to a girl like that, when a man like you is finished with her?"

I ignored all suggestions (again, sorry) and decided to rewatch something instead. But by rewatch I mean that I first saw this about 7 years ago, and because it's 3 hours and 20 minutes long, I haven't really bothered watching it since: Doctor Zhivago, from 1965.

official poster from 1965

                         

This classic directed by David Lean won nothing less than 5 Oscars, one of them being "Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium". By the way, I really recommend the novel this was based on, by Boris Pasternak.

Some things to keep in mind while reading this: I am biased. I have a thing for Russian Literature (Dostoevsky and Tolstoi are my babes), and Doctor Zhivago was one of the few mandatory high-school reads that I actually enjoyed. On top of that, since I remember liking the movie on my first watch back in 2011, I was excited for this.

And I wasn't disappointed.

Doctor Zhivago is a movie about, no surprise here, a physician named Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago (Omar Sharif). But the story itself is narrated by Zhivago's half-brother, Yevgraf (Alec Guinness), while he talks to a girl (Rita Tushingham) who he believes to be his niece.

Yuri became an orphan when he was young, and his mother's friends Alexander (Ralph Richardson) and Anna Gromeko (Siobhan Mckenna) raised him in Moscow, with their own daughter Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin).

Zhivago then becomes a medical student, although he's quite known for his poetry. He finally reencounters Tonya after she spent a long time in Paris, and her parents start talking about their marriage.

Yuri and Tonya enjoying the pre-Revolution glamour

Then we meet Larissa a.k.a Lara (Julie Christie), a 17 year old that ends up involved with her mom's friend, a wealthy (and creepy) older man named Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky (Rod Steiger); even though she wants to get married to her friend Pasha Antipov (Tom Courtenay), an idealistic Bolshevik.

my dress-code when the Finnish winter arrives

Lara's mother finds out about her affair with Komarovsky, and attempts suicide. Komarovsky then calls for his doctor's help, Zhivago's professor, who takes the young men with him for help. That's the first time Yuri sees Lara.

A peaceful demonstration of peasants goes wrong and the Tsar's guard hurts and kills participants, and in the confusion of the crowd, Pasha picks up a gun, that he gives Lara for safekeeping. This just fuels Pasha's hatred for the monarchy and sets him in a journey that will be his doom, eventually.

Komarovsky finds out about Lara's intentions of marrying Pasha, and tries to talk her out of it, but it doesn't work. He then rapes her, as if it's gonna solve anything. But she's not one to accept things quietly. Wanting revenge, Lara uses the gun given to her by Pasha to shoot Komarovsky in a Christmas party that Zhivago is attending (a.k.a the second time Yuri sees Lara). 

you go girl

World War I starts, and the men have to go to the trenches to defend Russia from Germany.

Pasha goes missing while leading a charge against the Germans, and Lara volunteers as a nurse in the front to try and find her husband, with whom she now has a daughter, Katya. There she finally meets Zhivago, who was drafted as a battlefield doctor. During and after the February Revolution, Zhivago and Lara run a field hospital for six months. They work together to help the wounded, and end up falling in love. But Zhivago remains faithful to Tonya, now his wife, with whom he has a son: Sasha. 

Lenin moves to Moscow, and finally establishes a Soviet government. This means that when Yuri returns home to his wife, father-in-law, and kid, he finds his house has been divided into "tenements", and a huge number of workers now live in the lower floor. 

Yevgraf finally has a role in the story he's telling: He's a member of the Cheka (Soviet police), and after seeing his half-brother steal firewood, warns Yuri that his poems have been deemed antagonistic towards communism by the Soviet censorship.  He offers to help Zhivago and his family with papers to travel to the countryside, to live in the Gromeko estate near the city of Yuriatin, in the Urals. 

They all board the train to leave Moscow and are warned that in their journey they will cross disputed territory between the White army and the Red Army, the latter led by commander Strelnikov, who happens to be Pasha, alive and kicking. 

and looking badass as a soviet officer

No more spoilers. 

But to keep you wanting more, I will tell you that Yevgraf believes the girl he's telling Zhivago's story to is Lara and Yuri's child; that WWI wasn't the only time Yuri had to attend to the wounded in battle; and that we haven't seen all of Komarovsky just yet. 

You can probably tell by now that I really liked this movie, even though it struggles a bit when portraying the passing of time: you never know if it's been 2 years or 2 weeks between most events, even if you have some knowledge of Russian history. 

This movie uses a few classical elements, like the "beam of light in the woman's eye" (which probably has a name I don't know) that is a must-have for older movies. 

this thing here

The cinematography was beautifully done, and the soundtrack was great (even though I got the impression they just repeated the same song over and over throughout the movie, it was still a good song). 

the Gromeko estate in the countryside

What I love the most about this adaptation is that not only you get to see both sides of life in Russia pre-Revolution, but you also see what life became after the Bolshevik took over, also from different perspectives. You understand why the workers were unhappy, and why they butchered the Romanoffs, but you also understand the resentment from people who had their houses locked down, and their belongings distributed. 

20th century Russia wasn't easy for anyone. 

actually some of this was filmed in Finland, I'm just not sure what scenes exactly

It never feels like a 3 hour movie. Yes, it's a romantic drama, without much action, and yet, you're entertained from start to finish. Of course there are some unnecessary scenes, it still is a 200 minute movie, but it's extremely well paced and doing laundry never even crossed my mind. 

So I'd say if you want to immerse yourself in Russian history and Literature, this movie is definitely worth the watch. And if you don't care about Russia at all, it's still a fantastic story about loneliness, revolution, love, and the unpredictability of life.