SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.
Director David Lean explored culture classes in his films, even if they were within one country. In Doctor Zhivago, a long and sad story, he adapts the Boris Pasternak novel that depicts life under the czars that led to the rule of the Communist Party which followed the revolution in Russia. The story distills these sweeping events by focusing on the lives of individuals, with a love story at its center.The tale begins after the revolution and is told in flashback. The establishing shot shows a mass of women marching through a tunnel at the site of a dam under the supervision of one individual. That image sums up Russian rule under Communism, where only those at the top of the hierarchy have individuality and the rest of the population is lumped together as one organism.
The man observing is Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness), a general, the half-brother of Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif). He tells the Engineer (Mark Eden) that life was intolerable in the past where some resorted to cannibalism to survive. (Notice that the Engineer at this point has no name, only his profession; the job he does for society as a whole is what is important here). Yevgraf is interested in a young woman, Tonya Komarovsky (Rita Tushingham) who may be Yuri’s daughter. The mother would be Lara (Julie Christie), who was Yuri’s inspiration for a book of poems, which the government only recently allowed the populace to read once the Communists gained enough power to allow anything that wasn’t dominated by the Party line.Tonya is not very informative about her early life,
not remembering her father and losing her mother while young. This story is
about history and Tonya’s gap of information allows for the retelling of the
past by Yevgraf. The shots of Ural Mountains and the expanse of the territory (the
film was actually shot in Spain) show the dwarfing of individuals as young Yuri
(Tarik Sharif) attends the funeral of his mother. It is a harsh introduction to
the finality of the death of an individual in contrast to the enduring sky
above.
Lara sees Pasha (Tom Courtney), her fiancé, a revolutionary of the Communist movement, handing out leaflets. Lara rescues him from the authorities pretending to be his sister and that she will handle him. Pasha says he is not like the Bolsheviks because they do not know right from wrong, but he does. His self-righteousness is evident, and Lara teases him about him being a “prig.” Her remark also points to her rejection of conformity of behavior. Yet, she has been drawn to him, possibly to balance out her rule-breaking nature.
Victor Komarovsky
(Rod Steiger), whose last name tells us of a connection to Tonya, is the
opposite of Pasha. He does not worry about ethical behavior as he is the lover
of Lara’s mother, a dressmaker, and lusts after the daughter, who is only seventeen
(despite Christie looking older). Lara is a passionate woman, and Pasha puts all
his drives into the impending revolution.
The next scenes show Victor taking advantage of Lara’s sexual awakening in the sleigh ride as soldiers “mount” their horses to attack the protesters. The images indicate a sort of rape of the lower classes by the privileged. Yuri has been adopted into the upper-class world and he observes the horrifying attack of the soldiers fittingly from a balcony above. The camera moves to the level of the protesters to put the audience in the middle of the chaos. However, there are cuts to Yuri who becomes rattled by what he sees. There are bodies and injured people left in the street and Yuri enters the street to use his medical skills. He is not allowed to help the victims as the authorities just load the people into carts to be hauled away to what is surely a horrible fate. There is blood on the virgin snow, symbolic of the attack on the purity of ideals which is echoed by Lara’s succumbing to the aptly named Victor’s exploiting of Lara’s innocence.Next, the adult Tonya (Geraldine Chapman) arrives from France saying how well Yuri’s poetry is received in France. It is a happy meeting, compared to the following scene where Pasha shows up at the dress shop with a facial wound he received in the demonstration, the residuals of his battle with the forces in power. Sasha has a gun he wants Lara to keep, and as the Russian Chekhov said, once you show a gun, the writer must fire it at some point. Lara is appalled by this turn of events. Pasha shows how violence will escalate now as he says there will be no more peaceful protests. She feels guilty because she was dining while the violence occurred outside. She also carries guilt for her sexual activity and confesses to the priest. But she continues to see Victor and wears a sexy dress he bought for her. He forces alcohol on her and despite her protests of his crude ways, she doesn’t stop seeing him. She is a young woman torn between her passionate drives and social restrictions on behavior.Yuri assists with an emergency house call and that is how he becomes involved in Lara’s life. Victor found Lara’s mother after she made a suicide attempt. Victor told the naïve Lara that her mother probably knew of Lara’s affair with Victor. Victor doesn’t want the scandal to come out because he has connections with everyone, no matter what the political party. He is an amoral survivor who uses advantages for himself wherever he can find them.
The doctors pump the mother’s stomach and save her. Yuri
goes to tell Lara about her mother’s condition. As he looks for her, we hear
Lara’s theme again, letting us know about the connection that will join them.
But Yuri witnesses Lara kissing Victor in gratefulness for getting her mother
help. Yuri finds out that Victor took care of his birth father’s will and tried
to devalue the estate and garner more for himself. Yuri is immediately
disgusted by Victor after what he has seen and knows.
There is a meeting between Pasha, Lara, and Victor,
who says he wants to ensure that Lara will be well cared for. Pasha, whose
mother and father died miserably, says he cares for the revolution even more
than Lara. He admits he has little experience in the ways of love, and only
kisses Lara on the forehead. The implication is he does not know how to satisfy
her sexually. Victor sees that he is a “young crusader” who will only give Lara
a meager life.
Back at the dress shop, he tells Lara that Pasha is a
“high-minded” man who people say they admire but really despise, most likely
because of his holier-than-thou stance. Victor sees Lara as an “alive” woman
but also calls her a “slut,” and precedes to take her by force, but she appears
amenable once the sexual overture occurs. He says not to delude herself that it
was “rape.” As a viewer we dislike Victor, because he has abandoned principles
so he can survive and take what he wants at any cost to others. Lara has been
used, but she has also allowed herself to be used. Perhaps her life has not led
her to find a man who is both passionate and principled. And that is where Yuri
comes in.
We again have contrasting edits as Yuri and Tonya
share a loving sleigh ride, hugging and kissing, even though Yuri has his mind
on Lara. Pasha reads a letter from Lara in which she confesses her
indiscretions. He at first wants to strike Lara, but then reconsiders and then
embraces her.
Yevgraf’s narrative voice returns, and we see him look
younger as he talks about how his mission was to use the conflict to undermine
the peasants sent to fight for a cause that was not in their interests. The “lucky”
one lost parts of their bodies while many died. He said those that volunteered
to fight may not have been happy in their marriages, and the shot tellingly zeroes
in on Pasha who enlists while leaving Lara and their child in the Urals, while Yuri
also departs, serving as a doctor. Pasha is a leader and men follow him, but he
leads them to death, his “high-minded” ways not allowing for Victor’s realism.
They are with the soldiers when they find out that the
czar is in prison and Lenin is in Moscow as civil war occurred. One of the
soldiers says that there will be no more czars, that there will be a worker’s
country with “no more masters,” and there will be “only workers in a workers’
state.” Sounds good, but as we know, idealism can come crashing down when it
confronts the reality of the human condition.
When Yuri sees his boy, Sasha (Jeffrey Rockland), the
boy slaps him. Is it because he has been away for so long? Or is it due to
Communist indoctrination to despise the upper class? Alexander joins them in
the one room now allocated to the family. There is little food, and Alexander
wonders how they will survive the winter. There is more to help unfortunate
people. But it is the unelected Communist Party that decides who gets what. Yuri
notes that those in charge have the “power” but not the “right” to order people
about, stressing the unfairness of the situation. He finds one man suffering
from starvation, which the Party does not want to acknowledge. Yuri’s attitude
of defiance is “noted” by a government official, which is a threat to anyone
who wants the truth to surface.
Tonya is in tears because they don’t have enough fuel
to keep the stove burning. Yuri goes out and rips wood off a fence and Yevgraf
sees his brother for the first time in an act of vandalism. He says, “Nothing
ordered by the Party is beneath any man.” His statement shows how those in
power have the right to tell others to perpetrate any act, no matter how small
or heinous. However, Yevgraf does not apprehend Yuri, perhaps because he is his
half-brother. Although he admits that if “you get hold of a man’s brother
you’re halfway home.” His words play on his relationship to Yuri, but reveals
the total abdication of any personal will to the party in power. He says he
admires his brother for his selflessness, but shows his ruthlessness when he
adds, “I’ve executed better men than me with a small pistol.” The “small”
adjective shows that admirable people can be easily eliminated if they try to defy
the Communist Party’s rule.
The train stops and Yuri is brought aboard the train
with Pasha in charge. We learn that Pasha is a renegade in the wilderness
eliminating those White Russians fighting for the old guard. He is ruthless in
his devout embracing of the revolution. Pasha says that he once admired Yuri’s
poetry but because of the party line he says he shouldn’t anymore. The poems
are full of “feelings, insights, affections” which seem “trivial” now. Pasha is
saying that everything revolves around the economy of the masses and individual
expression is irrelevant. He says, “The personal life is dead in Russia.
History has killed it.” That includes even his own family, since he hasn’t seen
Lara since the revolution began. He admits that even destroying a village is
necessary if anyone even sells horses to the Whites. When there is absolute
allegiance to any creed without question, the story is saying that tyranny
follows.
Despite Yuri’s objections to Pasha’s tactics, the
commander releases him. Perhaps because he is the brother of Yevgraf who is a
member of the “secret police.” They finally arrive at Alexander’s family home
in Varykino, but here, too, the Reds have acquired it and it is locked. They can
live in the cottage nearby. They receive news that the czar and his family have
been executed, which shows, as Yuri says, “there’s no going back.” The story
shows how complacency in life can quickly be eliminated.
Yuri again gazes out the window looking for that
feeling of transcendence, but he feels nothing to inspire his poetry writing as
he stares at the barren, wintry landscape and cannot put his pen to good use. Tonya
is ironing the clothes and as Yuri looks at the activity we know he is thinking
of Lara, who, as noted above, did the same when they worked together. Both
Alexander and Tonya suggest Yuri get out and go to Yuriatin. What they don’t
know is that is where Pasha told Yuri that Lara now resides.
Red partisans basically kidnap Yuri on the road
because they need a doctor in their relentless attacks against what they see
are counterrevolutionaries. They can blackmail Yuri as they know about Lara. They
justify their crimes against individuals in the name of political beliefs. It
seems that there is no end to the purging of those who are not marching to the
step of the new guard. To women wandering through the frozen wasteland it
doesn’t matter if there are White or Red soldiers, only “soldiers” since death
does not have an allegiance. Yuri asks Razin, the Communist leader here, if he
ever loved a woman. Razin echoes Pasha about the death of private life when he says
he “once had” a wife and four children.
Yuri deserts those that captured him and walks all the
way in the wintry weather only to find his family has left Varykino. The
half-frozen Yuri goes to Lara’s place where she left him a note saying she
heard in the town that he was alive, and left him some food. She wrote she was
going to Varykino. Lara returns and nurses Yuri for three months, telling him his
family is safe in Moscow. She met Tonya when people told her to look for Yuri
at Lara’s place. Tonya wrote Yuri a letter saying that they now have a daughter,
and the family is going to Paris, where Tonya spent time. Tonya left his
mother’s balalaika at Lara’s, which starts to show how the story is coming full
circle. Both Tonya and Lara find each other good people. If history hasn’t
killed individual life, it may have softened it, and it appears the suffering
has led to an understanding between the two women.
Of all people to show up, Victor appears and says he
is there to help them get out of Russia by going to the eastern shore. He says
that Yuri is a deserter, and his poetry is considered subversive. Alexander and
Tonya are engaged in a criminal attempt to leave the country. Victor is useful
because of his connections on both sides of the fight which has made him a
survivor. But his lack of morals and arrogance disgusts Yuri and Lara, and Yuri
throws him out. Victor is spiteful in the rejection saying everyone is made of
“clay,” that is lowly. He wants to drag everyone down to his selfish, amoral
level. Perhaps he is feeling resentful that he can’t be as upright a person as
Yuri.
Yuri and Lara do heed Victor’s warning and wish to delay as much as possible their separation at the hands of the Communist Party. They go to the family home at Varykino, which they find a frozen carcass of its old self, like the rest of old Russia. They make the place somewhat livable. During the night there, Yuri finds ink and paper and begins writing poetry that will become the volume dedicated to Lara.
Victor shows up again. He tells Yuri that Pasha is
dead. He was acting on his own and carried out deeds without the sanction of the
government. The Communist leaders used Lara as bait and now that he’s dead Lara
is in jeopardy. Victor’s continued attempts to rescue the couple demonstrate
the complexity of his character as he seems to be seeking some redemption.
While there is a poster of Stalin on display on a wall,
Yevgraf says Lara left him and was never heard of again. He says she probably
died in a forced labor camp as so many others under the authoritarian rulers of
Russia. Tonya finally divulges how she became separated from Lara. She was a
young child and there was fighting in the streets and a fire, and she says her
“father” let go of her hand. Yevgraf says it was Victor who abandoned her,
revealing that he could not shake his selfish survival drive. Yevgraf says he
hopes Tonya will consider that he is her uncle and offers the help of a family
member. David is the engineer from the beginning of the movie, and he has a
name for Tonya, her boyfriend, despite her country’s erasing individuality.