Stephanie Rodriguez-Solis Dr. Shapiro Introduction to Politics 7 November 2021 Dr. Zhivago Review Dr. Zhivago is a film mostly set in the 1910s as World War 1 and the Russian Revolution approaches. However, it starts in the 1940s, during World War 2 as General Yevgraf is trying to find the daughter of his brother Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago. He seeks out a girl named Tonya Komarov who seems to be working a a sort of camp, believing that she is his Yuri’s daughter, as well as the daughter of Lara, the subject of Zhivago’s poems that seem to be known and praised at their time. In speaking to her, it is revealed that she was found lost in Mongolia and she reveals that she does not remember her father and very little of her mother. Yevgraf then goes on to explain who his brother was and his story, explaining to her that he wrote the famous “Lara Poems.” As he starts the story, the film shifts to be mostly centered around him and follow’s Yuri Zhivago’s life as he narrates from time to time. He begins by explaining that Yuri lost his mother when he was young and at the same age that Tanya’s mother lost her. As the audience now follows Yuri, we see him attending his mother’s funeral and close family friends, the Gromekos and their daughter Tonya, take him in to raise him. They give him an instrument, the balalaika, that they explain was his mother’s and that she had a “gift” for playing it. Yevgraf then narrates that Yuri made his reputation as a poet but went on to study medicine to become a doctor. The movie then follows a young, blonde woman as she meets with a man named Pasha that is seem handing out flyers promoting a revolution. The scene then momentarily goes back to Yuri for a moment as he arrives at an extravagant looking home. It quickly switches back to the young woman from the train as she arrives home as well, and the audience learns that her name is Larissa, though they also refer to her as Lara. She enters and sees that her mother has a guest, Monsieur Komarovsky. Larissa interacts with Monsieur Komarovsky as he asks for her age, to which she replies that she is 17, and he puts a veil on her, admiring how she looks. In the next scene, Monsieur Komarovsky is meant to be picking Lara’s mother up to go to a ball but she has a fever, and insists that he take Lara instead. At the same time, there is a procession going on in support of the revolution that Pasha, Lara’s friend, is leading, and Yuri sees it from his house. Lara and Monsieur Komarovsky are now at the ball and spend the evening together, and he insists that she now refer to him more informally, as Victor Ippolitovich. On the carriage ride home from the party, Victor Ippolitovich assaults Lara and kisses her. At home she is seen crying in front of a mirror. In the next set of scenes, Yuri is happy to welcome Tonya home from Paris. Pasha also goes to visit Lara as she is about to leave for church, wounded after the procession that went on. She administers aid for him as he gives her a gun to hide and tells her that there will be no more peaceful demonstrations. At church, she is seen talking to a priest about the sins of a woman taken into adultery. Lara is then seen with Victor Komarovsky again, wearing a dress he chose for her. He “torments” her about the relationship they have going on and states that they both know that her mother knows about it. She goes to leave, but in the end he makes her stay. Lara’s mother is then seen sick and Victor Ippolitovich is with her. He sends a messenger to retrieve a professor, who happens to be Yuri’s teacher who he serves as an assistant. They go to Lara’s home and are able to save her mother, but Yuri sees Victor Ippolitovich and Lara noticing the relationship the have going on. Victor notices Yuri as Victor leaves her. The audience then sees Lara with Victor Komarovsky again as Pasha joins them, and she explains that they will be getting married, and Pasha states that is committed to the revolution and they will be moving to the Urals. When Lara and Komarovsky are back at her house, Komarovsky expresses his disapproval of the marriage. He insults her as well and rapes her as a matter of “proving his point” that she is a slut. After he leaves, she retrieves the gun Pasha had given her to hide and goes to look for Komarovsky at his home. She runs into Pasha and tells him everything is in a letter she left him and she continues on her way to a Christmas party where she shoots Komarovsky, as it is being announced that Yuri will be marrying Tonya. Pasha arrives at the party to take Lara away, and Yuri begins to treat Komarovsky. He asks him to keep his and Lara’s relationship a secret to which Yuri agrees. The war then officially begins, and Yuri’s brother, Yevgraf, enlists under a fake name by orders of the Communist Party to make it so that Russia loses to cause the revolution. He narrates as the audience also sees Pasha enlist, leaving Lara with a child. He continues to describe the war and shows the immense struggle soldiers and the country were going through, leading many to deserting. It is seen that Zhivago has been recruited as a field doctor and that Lara has joined as a volunteer nurse, and they work together to help the wounded. Zhivago tells Lara that he was there the night she shot Komarovsky. The audience then sees that the unit Zhivago and Lara are a part of has been discharged, and in their goodbyes it is revealed that they have fallen in love in the six months that they worked together, but Lara explains that they have not done anything that Yuri has to lie to Tonya about. Yuri goes home to Tonya and sees that their extravagant homes is completely different and has been taken by the association to house more people due to the large living space they had. They are now struggling for fuel, and so Yuri steals some from a fence, and his brother narrates that that is the first time he saw him. Yevgraf follows him home where the people in his home are taking his things, including the instrument gifted to him when his mother died. In a struggle to get the instrument back, he drops the wood, and as they realize they are all dismissed by Yuri’s brother, the police officer. Yuri immediately recognizes him, and they speak about their views on the party. Yevgraf tells him his “subtle support” of the party is not enough and that his family would be better off leaving, which he would help them do and Yuri eventually agrees. Yuri, Tonya, their son, and Tonya’s father board a crowded train to Varykino, an estate that the family owns in the Urals. While en route, the train stops in an area that is controlled by a man named Strelnikov. Yuri gets off the train and gets taken by guards to Strelnikov, who is actually Pasha and has become an even more intense revolutionary. Strelnikov interrogates Yuri, and he tells her how he recognizes him and that he worked with his wife, Lara, though Strelnikov tells him that she is in Yuriatin and he seems to not care for the private life anymore. He is let go and they continue to Varykino. At Varykino, there is a sign that states it has been expropriated in the name of the people, so they make to live in the small cottage on the estate that they haven’t taken. They start to fall into a more normal life. Yuri eventually goes to Yuriatin and sees Lara, and they become close again. They begin to have an affair, but eventually with the coming birth of his second child, he makes his mind to break things off with Lara. He leaves her, but on his way back to Varykino he is ambushed and taken by revolutionaries to serve as a doctor on the revolutionary front. Eventually deserts and makes his way back to Varykino on his own. After a long and intense journey through the cold, he makes it back but learns that there is no one at Varykino. So, he goes to the only other place he knows, Lara’s home in Yuriatin, where she takes care of him. She tells him that Tonya and his family are safe, and that they met when she left her a letter addressed to him explaining that they are being deported to Paris. Yuri continues to live with Lara and her daughter, Katya, but Komarovsky soon shows up at their home explaining that Yuri is a wanted man, due to the fact that he is a deserter and the views he writes about in his poems, and that Lara is being watched due to her connection with Strelnikov, her legal husband, and offers his help to them by helping them leave Russia, though they refuse. They decide to try to hide more and relocate to Varykino in the abandoned house with Lara’s daughter. They settle down and begin truly living together as a family In this part of the movie, the audience truly gets to see more of Yuri “the poet.” He begins writing a series of poems known as the “Lara Poems,” and were the poems Yevgraf showed the girl in the beginning of the movie. Komarovsky arrives to their home again to offer his help to get them out of Russia on a train headed to the Pacific Coast. They both refuse, but Komarovsky then pulls Yuri aside and explains to him that Strelnikov has been found on his way to Lara and committed suicide when he was arrested. Because of this, Lara has “served her purpose” and there for will be killed the next day. Yuri realizes the situation and tells Lara and Katya to go with Komarovsky promising that he will catch up to them later. On the train, Komarovsky rubs in Lara’s face that Yuri will not be joining them to which Lara replied that he is fool to even think that Yuri would leave go with Komarovsky and leave Russia. As he states that it was her duty as a mother anyway to come with him, she asserts that she is mother, but because she is carrying Yuri’s child. The movie resumes the current timeline where Yevgraf is talking to the girl named Tonya. He states that she was born in Mongolia in the Far East, where the train was headed, and that very year. She refutes by saying that a lot of children were, but he points out that not many with the name Tonya and with the last name Komarov or Komarovsky. He insists on asking her how she got lost, but she replies the same, that she does not remember. He tells her how he reunited with his brother, eight years after Yuri had parted with Lara. He helped get his job back at the old hospital he worked at, and on the train to work, he recognized Lara in the streets. In a moment of panic and excitement to get her attention, he hurries off the train but suffers a heart attack as she doesn’t notice and continues walking away. His funeral was well-attended, and that is where Yevgraf meets Lara for the first time, and he helps when she asks him to help her search for her child. Tonya is seen looking at a picture of her in a published book of Yuri’s poems, and Yevgraf turns to Yuri’s picture telling her that he is her father. He asks why she won’t believe it, and she says she wont if it isn’t true, but eventually he is able to convince her to at least think about it. The movie ends with Tonya leaving as Yevgraf notices her carrying the instrument that Yuri’s mother had a “gift” at playing. When he asks her about it, she explains that she plays well though no one taught her, and he tells her that “it must be a gift.” I think this movie is a very intricate and detailed movie. There are many very little details that add up to a realization or just enhance the viewing experience. One thing I particularly liked was the use of music. There is the opening piece, the intermission, and constant musical themes in the movie that I think capture the viewer even more. There is a theme that plays whenever something good or happy happens, even in the midst of all the sad events of the film Another aspect I enjoyed of the movie was the costume design. I am not sure what the trends and styles were at the time, but from the view of a general audience member, it seems like they put a lot of effort to make it period and location appropriate. The changes between classes and lifestyles that the characters go through is telling through aspects like their clothes. One thing that I think could be criticized of the film, is the fact that it can be seen as glamorizing a harsh moment in history. From what I now know of the Russian Revolution and what happened in Russia during World War I, I feel like the struggle in country has not been fully depicted in most cases that it is brought up. Though Doctor Zhivago may seem like a historical movie, it does not really go into that aspect enough to make it the main purpose of the movie. It really is just a background for a romantic story, and I can see how some people can see it as not doing the serious historical aspect of it justice. The film is a very beautiful and poetic piece that I think emphasizes its own artistic aspects, and I appreciate it as such, but I think the historical and social elements of the movie could have been given a bigger role than just moving the romance forward. I would recommended this movie but to certain people. It is quite a long movie, and it is not what I would consider an “easy watch.” It is a movie that you have to be involved in and pay attention to, to truly appreciate the details and full scope of the movie. It has a complicated love story, and while I think it would not have been made worse if the story were more simple, I think it is part of what makes the movie interesting. Because of that, I would not recommend it to people who like romantic movies, as those are usually clear and draw in a viewer that appreciates a clear, and fast, development to the relationship. The story presented in this film is much more slow paced and includes more cinematic moments. There are scenes where there is little to no dialogue, but there are beautiful shots with magical music playing that I think are constant that helps tie the film together. Doctor Zhivago is a good movie but it is once that requires someone to pay attention and their patience appreciate all its different aspects. If someone is able to supply both of those things then it is a great film, that I think can really stick with someone and leave them thinking about it after its ended, as it did with me.
