Posted on 01/22/2017 2:59:27 PM PST by NYer
Not many films can claim as their source material a novel published by the CIA and distributed by the Vatican. In fact, as far as I know, there is only one: Doctor Zhivago.
Banned from publication in its native Russia for its unglamorous portrayal of the rise of communism, Boris Pasternak’s manuscript was smuggled from the country by British Intelligence and passed on to the CIA. Restrained by politics from publicly distributing the novel themselves, the agency sought help from one of communism’s most fervent foes, the Catholic Church. That’s how it came to pass that Russian citizens were able to obtain copies of the forbidden work from the Vatican’s pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels.
From such cloak-and-dagger beginnings, the novel went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and receive numerous adaptations in various media, including, ironically enough, a 2006 mini-series produced for Russian television. But out of all its interpretations, the one that likely comes to most people’s minds when the name Doctor Zhivago is bandied about is director David Lean’s cinematic tour de force from 1965. Clocking in at over three hours, Lean’s film is a sprawling epic that follows the titular character, played by Omar Sharif, as he pursues poetry and romance amidst the bleak horrors of World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War.
The wide-ranging story begins simply enough with the newly orphaned Yuri Zhivago being taken in by the Gromekos and their young daughter, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). Under their protection, he grows to become both a skilled doctor and a poet of some renown. Yuri and Tonya eventually become engaged, but an idyllic life is not in their future. With the country on the cusp of chaos, Yuri finds himself enraptured at first sight with the beauteous Lara (Julie Christie). Though no words pass between the two, Yuri is unable to banish thoughts of Lara from his mind.
A few years later as Lenin is coming to power, Yuri and Lara cross paths again as doctor and nurse at an army field hospital. The two fall madly in love, but refuse to consummate their feelings as both are married with children. Fate intervenes, however, as Yuri’s family is soon forced to flee Moscow and relocate near to Lara, now living estranged from her brutish husband. Succumbing to years of unrequited passion, the two finally fall into one another’s arms. Unfortunately, there is little room for such bliss under the burgeoning communist regime. Yuri’s counter-revolutionary poetry and the wartime atrocities committed by Lara’s husband eventually bring the threat of the hammer and sickle right to the lovers’ doorstep.
Upon its release, Lean’s film was greeted with indifference (and sometimes outright hatred) by movie critics who lambasted the decision to relegate the horrifying historical events to the background and focus instead on the soap opera elements of the story. Yet despite the negative reviews, audiences flocked to theaters in droves to see the movie. Doctor Zhivago would go on to become one of the highest grossing films of all time (adjusted for inflation, it currently ranks number 8) and garner 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. In effect, Doctor Zhivago quickly became the Titanic of its time.
As with James Cameron’s later epic, a good part of the appeal of Lean’s film lies in its unrepentant romanticism. Yes, the revolution may be sending Russia crumbling into a frozen apocalyptic wasteland (depicted in glorious 70mm by Lean and cinematographer Freddie Young), but it is Yuri’s desperate struggle to cling to the ideals of art (symbolized by his mother’s ever-present balalaika) and love (present in both the earthy Tonya and the ethereal Lara) that matters most. While the financial ruin and physical dangers of communism are undeniably real, Pasternak’s story sees the philosophy’s desire to strip away these spiritual underpinnings of life as the movement’s true danger.
In his lengthy essay on the novel, it is this aspect of the story which Thomas Merton found most inspiring. “The deep interest of Dr. Zhivago,” the monk wrote, “is precisely its diagnosis of man’s spiritual situation as a struggle for freedom in spite of and against the virulence of this enormous political disease.” Communism was the obvious target of Pasternak’s work, but Merton saw the story’s warnings as applicable to any political system which seeks to supplant God’s teachings with State propaganda, an evil even a capitalistic society can slip into if not careful.
Doctor Zhivago may bury that message under mountains of melodrama, but it is there just the same, and it is one of the reasons the film endures. And it isn’t as if the movie is all doom and gloom. While Yuri’s own part in story does come to a tragic end, it is not truly the conclusion. In the film’s final scene, we see the grown child of Yuri and Lara walking past a rainbow, a balalaika in her backpack and a lover on her arm. No matter what happens, God is in his Heaven, and what matters most endures.
He was, I read all of his writings, but he wrote like a Russian, 400 subplots snaking their way to the conclusion. See “August 1914.”
I haven't read it either, but I love the film, and I thought there was no doubt that the commies were evil. It is implied that Lara ended her days in the Gulag.
I was raised Methodist and the experience was a once in a lifetime thing. Getting up every few hours through the night to pray in the chapel and listening to the seemingly endless prayer request lists sent to the Abbey from around the world opened my mind to a different reality.
Our sponsor, a Trappist Brother, Fa. Tarcisius, was a close friend of Thomas Merton and I remember the Catholics in our group were deeply touched to be there.
I was pregnant at the time and in the movie he left his pregnant wife.Hated the movie.
Aside from the wonderful music, it is a classic because Dr. Zhivago is a timeless story of endurance. Strelnikov assures Yuri “The personal life is dead.” But like the spring flowering after the bitter winter, people come alive again even under the most hostile, suffocating oppression. Yuri’s daughter striding away alongside her mate at the end — life finds a way through. The film began with little Yuri witnessing the burial of his mother.
Yuri’s daughter recalls almost nothing of her parents, yet she plays beautifully on the balalaika that belonged to her father. She is told her ability is a gift; it represents the life force or spirit that persists against all odds.
It all seems random and impersonal. Children are cut down, by mistake. An entire population is decimated by philosophical error. The hero is a physician who can patch, but not cure his fellow man of their spiritual disease. The most feared warrior is a young man whose battles left him mutilated and emasculated; before that he was — a pale intellectual. The cynical opportunist, like a gangrene, temporarily advances and thrives. Evil baffles the wise. There is no sense to it, one endures — or not.
The lyrics of the popular tune “Lara’s Theme” expressed the main theme of the novel: someday we’ll meet again ...whenever the spring breaks through.
Yes the events of that era were the background to a love story. It was a fascinating time as someone else pointed out.
There were a few more coincidences than one would expect in real life but I guess that is part of what made it interesting.
I also agree that Strelnikof was interesting. Maybe something like the old saying about power corrupting.
The movie was beautiful. Still is.
My sainted mother bought material with birch trees on it, as a result of seeing that movie.
Solzhenitsyn is one author who changed my life. Before him I was a relatively harmless typical liberal Californian who grew up in the 60s. Then I read “A Day in the Life...”, Cancer Ward the Gulag Archipelago, and August 1914. Couldn’t be liberal any more. Finally saw the horror of Communism for what it really was. As you say, he wrote like a Russian, but he spoke to me. One of the great writers of the 20th century in my opinion. I regret not thanking him somehow for opening my mind.
“I have not read the book but the movie was not particularly hard on the Bolsheviks.”
I saw it in an empty theater one afternoon when I was cutting high school back in 1966 or 1967. It was my introduction to the history of the Bolsheviks. Maybe it wasn’t hard enough on them, but I walked out of that theater despising them, even though I had as yet no historical context.
Sorry, maybe I am dense . . . or maybe just a prude, but there isn’t any character in the story I like. Certainly, we all have flaws, but what I see as the self-indulgent flaws of these folks, makes them ultimately unlikeable.
I disagree, I was 14 when I saw it and my insight into Russian life was long grocery lines and nuclear bomb. The part in the movie where they take over their home and split it up help me understand our way of life better and made me proud to be an American. Yes,I also remember the fallout shelters and duck and cover exercises in school. Who could forget Bert the turtle.
“but what I see as the self-indulgent flaws of these folks, makes them ultimately unlikeable.”
When people are separated from the familiar, from their homes and people, they seem more likely to succumb to temptations that promise to ameliorate loneliness and offer emotional support.
When Lara and Yuri gave in to temptation, they were in such a situation. They didn’t know from day to day if they would be killed.
I’m not saying that what they did was right, but I would say that few of us would pass that test.
Therefore, I don’t put them in the same category as our depraved “if it feels good, do it” libertines. They were flawed, they were too weak to meet their challenges, and they sinned, and perhaps that’s what makes them so human.
I don’t like the “epic lurve story”(glorification of adultery)angle.
I didn’t get the idea that communism was glorified though.
If families hadn’t been split up to serve the effort maybe Lara and Yuri wouldn’t have fallen into such temptation.
The scenes I remember most that spoke to my heart the loudest about communism were pertaining to Yuri’s homecoming and what became of the house he lived in-he and his family reduced to one small room therein-and the food shortages.
After my first viewing of the movie, I thought Julie Christie was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
I grew up in the Deep South. Years later, while on a temp assignment in NJ during the depths of winter, I went for a run. When I came back inside, I was shocked to see my breath had frozen into my beard. I instantly thought of Yuri seeing himself in the mirror after his escape and trek back to Lara. (Unfortunately, the only warm and wet thing I had waiting for me after defrosting was a hot shower).
And whereas Solzhenitsyn was banned in the Soviet Union, today he is required reading in Russian schools.
Our high school history teacher took the class to see Zhivago in 1966. My Russian anti-communist parents saw it too, and the scene with people packed in the train with straw all round was very much their own history. I later read the book. Both are good and reflect the devastating changes brought on by the revolution. (In the book, Zhivago has not just one mistress, but one or two more)
I was just thinking the other day about the part where Omar Shariff drops dead of a heart attack while his love pulls away on a train.
I tried placing that scene in “Planes Trains and Automobiles”. Amused myself bigly.
I hate that side of it also, but I can’t help but wonder if the rise of Bolshevism/Communism demoralized and dehumanized the population to the point where they were more susceptible to behave like that.
The machine must move forward regardless of collateral damage. God didn’t matter, morality didn’t matter, family, tradition and property didn’t matter. Everything good and decent was trampled underfoot to advance that evil system.
The number one thing I got out of this was how the people were demoralized and ground up in the system. The girl and the guy walking away at the end? They will probably be destroyed too just like Yuri, his wife and Lara.(no sympathy for Lara or Yuri though) No matter what, the machine keeps on running, fueled by human suffering.
Also a fabulous BRIDGE player.
If not, if such a character and viewpoint are lacking, then the brutality of Soviet communism against ordinary people becomes like a destructive natural force such as a volcano or hurricane instead of arising from deliberate choices directed by a monstrous philosophy. As it is, the humane sympathy that we develop for Yuri, Lara, and other characters in the movie leads viewers to reject the excuses and justifications that a sympathetic character offers for the brutality of communism.
The more cogent criticism of the movie perhaps is that it emphasized the soap opera elements of Pasternak's masterpiece at the expense of his full depiction of just how terrible and evil Soviet communism was. Smuggled to the West and first published in Italian with secret CIA assistance, Paternak's novel caused an international sensation. Not until 1988 was the full, original version openly published in Russia, but it had long circulated in samizdat and did much to discredit communism in its original and greatest stronghold.
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