Doc­tor Zhiva­go (1965)

Like wad­ing through beau­ti­ful­ly lit cus­tard, David Lean’s notice­ably unlean adap­ta­tion of Boris Pasternak’s 1957 nov­el lan­guid­ly oozes back into UK cin­e­mas in a new 4K restora­tion by way of pro­mot­ing the BFI’s block­buster film sea­son con­cern­ing all things love. Adjust­ed for infla­tion, the film sits tri­umphant­ly in the top 10 biggest box office hauls of all time, and when watch­ing this sludgy epic now, one can only deduce that a tem­po­rary bout of masochis­tic insan­i­ty came over the world pop­u­lous in 1965 and that the rev­o­lu­tion­ary spir­it of the Nou­velle Vague had yet ful­ly pen­e­trate main­stream moviego­ing circles.

Omar Sharif is the epony­mous field doc­tor and free­lance poet who is bat­ted back and forth between staid domes­tic­i­ty and patch­ing up sol­diers on the Russ­ian front dur­ing the 1917 rev­o­lu­tion. Though in a cosy union with old sweet­heart and friend of the fam­i­ly, Tonya (Geral­dine Chap­lin), he is mys­te­ri­ous­ly drawn to Julie Christie’s effer­ves­cent beau­ty Lara, whose path he hap­pens to cross every few years. With each chance meet­ing, his yearn­ing grows stronger and as soci­ety crum­bles under a régime obsessed with para­noid anti-rev­o­lu­tion­ary purges, it only forces them to seek solace in one anoth­er. And who could resist a women who’s eyes are con­stant­ly bathed in daz­zling light?

Sprawl­ing over three painful­ly slow hours and includ­ing both an over­ture and an inter­mis­sion, Lean’s bom­bas­tic, pres­tige panora­ma offers lit­tle case for its mas­ter­piece sta­tus on for­mal, dra­mat­ic and even super­fi­cial emo­tion­al grounds. It also received a pal­try two votes in Sight & Sounds 2012 poll, sug­gest­ing a pic­ture very much of its time. Col­lec­tive tastes alter with the years, and Doc­tor Zhiva­go appears to show­case much that’s wrong with this brand of bulky, auteur-dri­ven lit­er­ary extrav­a­gan­za which demands every­thing from the view­er while offer­ing lit­tle in return, with Lean com­ing across like a despised school­mas­ter not want­i­ng to open him­self up to his bray­ing students.

The one thought that arris­es from watch­ing this now is that Lean would’ve made great exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma. Or, had he been as dar­ing as, say, Kubrick with his choice of mate­r­i­al, per­haps his name would be spo­ken of in high­er esteem among mod­ern cinephiles? The sin­gle shot which stuns is when Fred­die Young’s cam­era mirac­u­lous­ly shifts focus between the frost on a win­dow pane, to a lamp shin­ing inside a room, and then to Zhiva­go him­self, sit­ting qui­et­ly and writ­ing poet­ry. There’s more emo­tion and depth in that sin­gle 30-sec­ond shot than there is in all the quiv­er­ing lips, moist eye­lids and curs­es to the sky that make up the remain­der of this turgid, loose-leaf his­to­ry lesson.