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Rating:  - An Epic Story That Only David Lean Could Tell!
This film together with "Bridge On the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia" represent a hattrick of director David Lean's best ever work as well as among the best films ever made. Although "Lawrence of Arabia" is clearly the best of the three, "Doctor Zhivago is a close second. This film has been described quite aptly as Russia's "Gone With the Wind" as the loves and lives of the people close to Doctor Zhivago gets told amid the backdrop of World War 1 and the Russian Revolution all the way to the Russia of the 60's. No one can quite tell an epic story as well as David Lean does and his films are so good that they transcend time and as true classics should they age very well and hold up very well to repeated viewing. The cast is excellent and so is the brilliant camerawork and the haunting score by Maurice Jarre.
This dvd version is a real treat as the second disc is chockful of bonus extras like interviews with the cast and a good making of documentary while the main course on disc one has very good picture quality and especially good Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound quality as well. This dvd represents a remarkably well done restoration of the film which makes it an extremely enjoyable film in this day and age. Even the digipak cardboard packaging is very well done and aesthetically appealing in design.
If you are looking for David Lean's best work, you need look no further than "Lawrence of Arabia", this film and "Bridge On the River Kwai" and in that order.
Highly recommended!
Rating: - Dr Zhivago
Great movie to begin with and this 2 disc set was especially nice. I enjoyed watching the old interviews with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie which were conducted back at the time of the original theatrical release.
Rating:  - A pretty film with an average plot about mostly unlikeable people
I am a woman of a certain age. I had never seen this film before, and sat down to view it with absolutely NO preconceptions or knowlege beyond that it was a 'really famous movie about people living at the time of the Russian Revolution."
4 hours later (allowing for some locking up of the scratched library copy I viewed) ... I slapped myself awake and went off to get a snack.
My reviews will pretty much echo most of the other 2-3 star ones.
It's a very pretty film. The cast is attractive, the cinematography lush, the sets well done. (But the cast may be a bit TOO attractive. I found it very hard to swallow the image of Geraldine Chaplin looking like she's just stepped out of the local beauty parlor after spending 2 weeks in a cattle car with 49 other unwashed people!)
But pretty will only take you so far. The script and direction waver between utterly confusing and utterly boring and utterly unbelievable. The minor characters are almost all two-dimensional ciphers. (The evil Bolsheviks ... very cold-war indeed.) And the major ones are mostly unlikeable and uninteresting. I couldn't really care about either Zhivago OR Lara. Why should I root for their star-crossed love affair? Why should I LIKE this man who is cheating on his pregnant wife for no apparent reason. If they were able to resist their attraction/temptation while working together for 6 months in an isolated army hospital, why couldn't they resist when they met again ... 5 miles away from Zhivago's pregnant wife and beloved son?
The only really interesting characters were the few 3 dimensional ones -- Alec Guiness, Geraldine Chaplin and Rod Steiger's characters. (The last of whom is at least SUPPOSED to be unlikeable.)
At 2 hours this might have been a tolerable chick-flick. But at 3 1/2 it's too long, and far too boring.
Rating:  - A sweeping epic.
Doctor Zhivago is a gorgeous and complicated war and love story. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie are heaven together, they have intense and natural chemistry. David Lean directed this epic, he sure likes to make long movies. This film has lovely cinematography and an Oscar-winning score. Check out this classic sometime, enjoy!
Rating: - Zhivago, Zhivago that toddling Com ...
First off, this is an epic masterpiece of classic proportions.
1. My wife doesn't like this movie at all as she's often disturbed by the theme of the cheating husband who dotes on some younger, prettier thing, gushes over her in poetry and then abandons his wife and family who stick with him in times of trouble and who actually rescue him as a young child. If this movie is ever on the television when she's home, she either just quietly turns it off or changes the channel. Some people are probably like that though and have little tolerance for the level of tomfoolery that goes on in this movie. To say that the adultery angle is mild in Dr. Zhivago is an understatement. People with faint hearts be warned. Adultery is the soup de jour here.
2. As a published poet and someone who has probably lived a life that often rings similar to Yuri Andreivich Zhivago, I am affected by this movie in a different way altogether. It's actually quite haunting. Saying I'm a romantic is another understatement. I've got a romance habit that could burn down concrete buildings. I've also written my fair share of 'Lara Poems', too, but glad that I went through it and have moved on.
This movie has been a favourite of mine ever since I was a boy, sitting too close to the television late at night, still awake and watching the Monday Night Movie at 11pm. It meant more to me then than I ever realized and probably etched something within me that made my fate similar to Yuri's. I've never abandoned anyone, so let's get that clear for one, but in other regards it's interesting, or at least to me.
Is this review helpful to you? Will it help your decision to purchase this DVD set? Probably not. It's a personal account of how Dr. Zhivago has made an impression in my life and what it means to me.
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