The Saturday Evening Movie Post [with moviegique]: Dr. Zhivago

We enter the bleakest time of the year for dedicated moviegoers, what Red Letter Media used to call "F--- You, It's January." I think later they rebranded it as something like "F--- You, It's Forever" when looking at the dismal line up of...2019? I don't precisely recall, but it is hard to look at the slate of major releases with a sense of optimism.

We saw a good quasi-documentary about Storks called "The Tale of Silyan," which tells a true-ish story while featuring gorgeous images of storks and landscape, from National Geographic.

Then there's "The Plague," an odd '90s coming-of-age story with strong horror elements. But, you know, junior high is already a horror story. It was solid. Joel Edgerton stars as the world's most clueless gym coach.

We ventured out to a classic L.A. theater tp see the delightful 1958 Jacques Tati film, "Mon Oncle". I can't recommend it strongly enough. It's partly translated from French but partly not because the dialogue isn't that important. It's almost a silent cartoon comedy, very gentle, and at this point, painfully poignant, as this is a France which, even mocked, shall nevermore be.

Speaking of painfully poignant, however, I went on the the 30th or 31st to see Dr. Zhivago. I nearly wept for the artistry, and realizing this is another thing that will not be created in the future. The beauty, the scope, the blocking, the set design--I mean, turning 1960s Spain in the summer into 1915 Russia in the winter. And the story itself is delicate. Nobody saves the cat.

It's the 60th anniversary, so I thought I'd re-up the 50th anniversary review I wrote. I'm pretty much in accord with myself on this latest viewing (not always the case), but I liked it even more this time.

I still find the elision of Lara and her abusive customer's relationship jarring. It's there but we have to do some heavy inferring.

Sharif had to tape his eyes back to look less Egyptian. Can you imagine?

It didn't do my heart good to watch tiny, dimwitted tyrants telling people what they should and shouldn't be allowed to have, and I despaired that those people are still running around, still thinking they should run things.

Nonetheless, I will be surprised to see a better movie this year, unless I go see "Lawrence of Arabia".

Ask me if I want to go see a three hour movie. (Go on, Peter Jackson, ask me.) The answer is likely to be “maaaaaaaaaybe”. Now, tell me it’s by David Lean, the great director of Lawrence of Arabia. I’ll have my popcorn in hand before you finish rolling your “r"s, which you should do, if you’re saying "David Lean, the great director of Lawrence of Arabia”.

Dr. Zhivago is, in fact, 3 hours and 20 minutes, and longer if you factor in the intermission and the overture, but much like Lawrence, it leaves you wanting more. But before we get into that, let’s just recap the plot: The eponymous Zhivago is orphaned at a young age and taken in by some family friends who have a daughter his age. Zhivago and the daughter fall in love and get married, and live happily ever after, in the manner of all protagonists of Russian novels.

The happy couple!

Nyet! But seriously, things are going all right, at least for their little family, and then there’s a bit of trouble in the form of World War I and the October Revolution. In the tumult, Zhivago ends up manning a hospital full of injured with the help of Lara, a nurse he has crossed path with several times previously, and who is now married to a fanatical revolutionary.

Zhivago and Lara fall in love, though they never consummate, and Zhivago goes back home to find his family property divided “fairly” amongst the survivors of his family and a bunch of poor people who see a good opportunity for revenge. To make matters worse, Zhivago is a poet, and his poetry is on the outs with The Party, so he has to flee into the country—where his path crosses again with Lara.

One of the reasons I’d never seen this film before is because it just sounds boring to me. Much like Lawrence, really. Even now! But there’s something magical about Lean, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. The cinematography and blocking is flawless, of course—this is a great movie to look at, with its snow palaces and shadowy street scenes. The characters are interesting, sure, even for three or more hours. The story hangs together better than most modern ones, maybe: Instead of a series of things that just happen, every cause and effect here seems thoughtful, even when essentially random from the characters’ perspectives.

There isn’t a ton of suspense in the thriller style. This sort of movie can make Hitchcockian suspense seem practically gimmicky. But you care about the characters' fates, and that creates a different kind of suspense. Zhivago is a good man, even a pure man, which is an odd thing to say to one in a love triangle. Perhaps because he is not a womanizer, just a man blindsided by love. He doesn’t seem entirely earthly.

"Did somebody call for an emergency poet?"

Sometimes you see a movie that everyone loves and agree with them about all the great aspects of it but still personally just don’t like it. Sometimes there’s a movie like this, where you agree with everyone about all the great aspects, love it—but still don’t understand why.

The acting was different back then, I note. I don’t want to say it’s stagey, but it’s bigger than modern acting. There’s a scene where the Moscow police/army storm through a Commie protest and mow everyone down. Lean doesn’t show the violence, he shows Zhivago’s reaction to it, and it’s bigger than you’d see today. Not, like, Shatner big, but still: big.

Overall, it’s an amazing film, perhaps not quite up to Lawrence but still a classic. Of course, it got very mixed reviews at the time, and there’s no need to speculate why. Lean and Pasternak do what Zhivago is accused of in the movie: They tell a story about human beings in a time of great revolution. And there’s nothing Romantic about the Revolution.

The movie is bookended by Zhivago’s half-brother, a party apparatchik, trying to locate Zhivago’s daughter. He tells the story partly to a younger comrade (who notes pointedly that, if the younger generation doesn’t appreciate Zhivago’s poetry, it’s because they weren’t allowed to by the State). The possible niece works in a mine or factory or something that falls short of a worker’s paradise, and is scared of her would-be uncle who, as a Party Leader, is extremely powerful and dangerous. As he says, “nothing ordered by the Party is beneath the dignity of any man.”

He fights in World War I with the purpose of making Russia fail. And succeeds. And counts it as his greatest work.

Lara’s husband, insane as he is, articulates the the Revolutionary ideal: “The private life is dead for a man with any manhood.” Then in the same breath, when it’s pointed out to him that he burned the wrong village, he says “A village betrayed us, a village is burned. The point is made.”

They still look like this, but they pretend to smile now because it fools people. (Tom Courtenay won Best Supporting Actor and looks like the prototype for Indy's antagonist in "Raiders".)

Then, after serving in the war, when Zhivago comes home, his home has been #occupied. All of Moscow is, really, and of course, everyone is sick and starving and feeding off resentment of the rich. Zhivago, as a man who writes love poems, is a threat. When they escape to the country, they find their old house unused and boarded up, but with a sign threatening terrible things to them should they dare to use it. And already the Party has spies everywhere.

We don’t actually witness Lara’s fate, but we hear she may have ended up in the gulags.

So, yeah, I don’t wonder that critics judged it harshly, in an era when the New York Times was decades away from admitting Duranty lied. It’s a deeply Romantic film at every level and breathes with an understanding that the joyless worker state of Communism is death to Romance.

It was fun to see all these people in their prime that I knew as a child primarily in middle age and late life. Omar Sharif is quite handsome and earnest in a way that keeps things from getting sleazy. I’d always thought of Geraldine Chaplin as okay-looking, but she is heart-breakingly sweet here. Until 2006’s Away From Her, I’d always thought of Julie Christie as unremarkable looking, but it’s hard not to fall in love with her here.

I don't think frame captures do her justice but here's a classic shot.

Rod Steiger does a great job as the epitome of the old world corruption. I imagined Alec Guinness standing there, delivering his lines with the perfect combination of menace and party-toadying, thinking “I’m going to be remembered for swinging around a flashlight-sword.”

The music, by Maurice Jarré, is near perfect. About the only thing that I wasn’t sold on was the creepy music he used for Lara’s (Christie) affair with Komarovsky (Steiger). But I wasn’t clear on that whole thing. It was creepy, and I’m not saying Jarré was wrong, or anything, but maybe the relationship needed a little less elision in the movie itself.

Still, here’s the key thing: The Boy and I? We would sit down and watch it again in a heartbeat.

If you have a chance to see it in a theater—it’s making the rounds for its 50th anniversary restoration—by all means, do so.

Fun fact: This is entirely fake. Filmed in Spain in 100 degree weather, with the cast wearing fur coats and being trapped inside enclosed rooms to preserve the illusion/continuity. The actors nearly passed out at times.

posted by Open Blogger at 07:30 PM

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