Doctor Zhivago (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Dr. Zhivago is a sad story of a sad country. It gives great insight into the problems with socialism that have inflicted the country of Russia for a long long time. It is also interested to note that to my knowledge, Russia never has had a major movement of God in their history. Perhaps this is the reason for all the despair. I find it interesting that the book and the movie were banned for many years in Russia. Makes me think that there was too much truth within it for those in control. It is a very well done movie, but be prepared to be effected by the emotions of the story. I was depressed for a week after watching it. However, I am better off for having viewed it.

Somewhere my love, there will be songs to sing
Although the snow covers the hope of spring
Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold
And there are dreams, all that your heart can hold
Someday well meet again, my love
Someday whenever the spring breaks through

You'll come to me out of the long-ago
Warm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snow
Till then, my sweet, think of me now and then
Godspeed, my love, till you are mine again

To this reader/viewer Maurice Jarre hit the perfect note when he composed "Lara's Theme" for David Lean's version of Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago." While Jurii Zhivago is the main character Lara is in fact the central figure of the drama. Her rape-seduction by wealthy powerful Komarovsky, himself a metaphor for exploitative Imperial Russia, is the `inciting incident' for the story and metaphorically for the chaos transforming Russia. This incident is the `hook' for the main-character-action in Pasternak's novel, Lean's film version, and the Masterpiece Theatre version and everything that follows springs from this event.

In the novel Pasternak gives us this picture of Lara. She was: "...only a little over sixteen but she was well developed. People thought she was eighteen or more. She had a good mind and was easy to get along with. She was very good looking....Lara was the purest being in the world." Her mother tells Komarovsky to take Lara to the party as she is not feeling well: "Take Lara. You are always telling me to look after Lara. Well now you look after her....And look after her he did--what a joke!....It was all this waltzing that had started it....But never again would she allow anyone to kiss her like that....She must stop all this nonsense." They leave the party and Komarosky chides her: "Good heavens, Lara, what an idea! I just wanted to show you my apartment. We're so near." Afterwards, "Lara walked all the way in a daze and realized what had happened to her only when she reached home....If mother learned about it she would kill her...and then she would kill herself...Now she was--what was is called?--a fallen woman....Her shoulders quivered. She was weeping."

The Masterpiece Theatre version gives us a rather different view of this incident as Lara is deliberately set up by her mother for Komarovsky's lust, and Lara is willing to go along with it, well aware that her mother is his mistress and he is their benefactor. Her mother says: "Lara you have to go! And please be nice to him. For my sake." They dance, he kisses her, she doesn't resist and she says "All right I'll do it!...That's what it has all been about isn't it? So all right. What do you do? Ask for a room? I'm sure you've done this before?" He says, "Larissa this was never in my mind." She says, "Yes it was. Don't lie about it. I don't want any lies between you and me. I'm tired of being a child." "Very well," he answers taking her into the billiard room and undoing her dress. Afterwards at home she studies her reflection in the mirror and smiles, clearly savoring the memory of Komarovsky's passion for her, and her own pleasure in what had happened.

Subsequently Pasternak reveals Lara's afterthoughts: "What an inescapable spell it was! If Komarovsky's intrusion into her life had merely filled her with disgust, she would have rebelled and broken free. But it was not so simple as that." She: "...was flattered that a handsome man whose hair was turning gray, a man old enough to be her father, a man who was applauded at meetings and written up in newspapers, should spend his time and money on her, should take her out to concerts and plays, and tell her that he worshipped her, and should, as they say, `improve her mind'....Komarovsky's lovemaking in a carriage behind the coachman's back or in an opera box in full view of the audience fascinated her by its daring and aroused the little devil slumbering in her to imitate him....It is she who has a hold on him. Doesn't she see how much he needs her? She has nothing to be afraid of. Her conscience is clear. It is he who should be ashamed, and terrified of her giving him away. But that is just what she will never do...she does not have the necessary ruthlessness--Komarovsky's chief asset in dealing with subordinates and weaklings....And he continued taking her, veiled, to dinner in the private rooms of that ghastly restaurant where the waiters and clients undressed her with their eyes as she came in. And she merely wondered: `Does one always humiliate those one loves?' "

It is at this time that Lara notices the effect she has upon Pasha Antipov, a boy of her age who eventually becomes Strelnikov. In Pasternak's words, "He was so childishly simple he did not conceal his joy at seeing her...As soon as she realized the kind of influence she had on him, she began unconsciously to make use of it....several years later and at a much further stage in their relationship she took his malleable, easygoing character seriously in hand. By then Pasha knew that he was head over heals in love with her and that it was for life." But the revelation of her affair with Komarovsky turns Pasha into the empty cold-hearted Strelnikov.

The effect of her affair with Komarovsky on her mother, his mistress, is the woman's attempt at suicide. The aftermath of her recovery is witnessed by an orphaned youth of Lara's age, Yurii Zhivago, a by-chance observer of the scene between Lara and Komarovsky described thus by Pasternak: "Not a word passed their lips, only their eyes met. But the understanding between them had a terrifying quality of magic, as is if he were the master of a puppet show and she were a puppet obedient to his every gesture....in answer to his sneering glance she gave him a sly wink of complicity. Both of them were pleased that it had all ended so well---their secret was safe and Madame Guishar's attempted suicide had failed. Yurii devoured them with his eyes...."

In both David Lean's and Masterpiece Theatre's versions of Doctor Zhivago he is a young man, a medical student helping with the mother's recovery, and he is captivated by Lara. But the current love interest in his life is Tonia, the daughter of his foster parents. So now we have a love quadrangle: Lara, Komarovsky, Pasha/Strelnikov, and Yurii Zhivago; and a love triangle Lara, Yurii, and Tonia. Lara is always at the center of the action either actually or by implication, and it is with this central theme that Pasternak uses his novel as a vehicle for his artistic, philosophical, religious, and political beliefs offered with endless details of the times and a huge cast of secondary characters.

After six months of the affair with Komarovsky a disillusioned Lara develops the `necessary ruthlessness' to give him away. She arrives at the Sventitskys' Christmas party with a pistol and the story unfolds from there. After pouring over the novel, viewing Lean's magnificent film many times, and thoroughly absorbing the Masterpiece Theatre version, I find myself utterly enchanted with all three productions each offering uniquely delightful variations and dimensions for this marvelous tale.

Those "film critics" who panned Lean's Doctor Zhivago as a mere soap-opera seem oblivious of the fact that Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature for creating it, and have missed the point that the abused and much-loved Lara is herself Mother Russia.

I like the movie, and the dvd set is fine, but I prefer to watch movies with the words and the mouth movements in sync. Amazon has sent me two of the two-disc special edition, and they're both out of sync.

Great story telling. So much story to follow, so much history to learn and wonder about how the human race can survive so much.

What am I suppose to say? words cannot describe the delicacy of its squeamish characters.