Monday, May 26, 2014

BUCKET LIST UPDATE No. 151: Watch “Doctor Zhivago” (1965)

“Doctor Zhivago” is a classic movie that I’ve heard about for years, but had never seen, which is why I put it on my “bucket list” a few years ago. During the past week, I finished watching it for the first time, and I thought it was great. No wonder it’s such a famous movie.

Directed by David Lean, this movie was released in theatres on Dec. 22, 1965 and is loosely based on the novel by Boris Pasternak. The cast included Omar Sharif in the lead role of Dr. Yuri Zhivago as well as Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness and Tom Courtenay. If you’ve never seen it, be prepared to sit for a while because the movie’s about three hours and 20 minutes long.

It’s hard to summarize the plot of a movie that long, but in a nutshell, it’s about the search for the orphaned child of a famous Russian poet (Zhivago) and his beautiful, young lover, Lara (Christie), who incidentally wasn’t his wife. These three, along with the rest of the characters, get swept up in the aftermath of World War I and the Bolshevik revolution. The movie is set years after all of this chaos and hardship, and communist officials are trying to sort out what really happened. All of the events in the movie take place before the start of World War II.

This movie really has a little something for everybody. It’s essentially a love story with a big dose of mystery. There’s also lots of action when you take into account the scenes depicting riots and warfare. The characters also battle harsh conditions like Russian snow and ice, and trains and horses also play a big part in the movie. There's also a fair amount of political intrigue, complete with secret police officers and neighborhood informants.

As you might have imagined, this movie received a lot of recognition when it first hit theatres. It won a Golden Globe Award for Best Drama and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, only to come up short against “The Sound of Music.” The American Film Institute also ranked it No. 39 on its “AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies” list, and the British Film Institute ranked it No. 27 on its list of “Best 100 British Films.”

Of course, having now watched the movie, I’m left wanting to read the original novel, which was published in 1957. Originally written by Pasternak in Russian, the novel had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union and was first printed in Italy. Later, Pasternak would win the Noble Prize for Literature for the book.

In the end, I enjoyed this movie and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good epic film. I’d rank this one right up there with “Gone with the Wind” and “Ben-Hur.” How many of you have ever watched “Doctor Zhivago”? What did you think about it? Did you like it or not? Let us know in the comments section below.

No comments:

Post a Comment