Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Second viewing; the first was before 1987.

Beginning shortly before the Russian revolution, it tells the story of an upper-class physician who falls in love with a lower-class nurse nicknamed Lara, both being married to someone else. Several characters enter into the plot: the lecherous attorney who covets Lara, Yuri's half-brother who is a bolshevik who makes a career in the Red Army after the revolution, Lara's husband who initially is a menshevik but later becomes a bolshevik, etc., all against the background of the upheavals occurring in Russia (World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War, etc.).

The clearly melodramatic plot has, against all odds, people reencountering one another no matter how remote and haphazard their location is. Despite that, I think the movie gives a pretty good idea of what communism did to the country. Another of the movie's pluses is the sheer richness of imagery contained in it.

Seen in pan-and-scan and partly dubbed in Portuguese.

Rating: 51 (up from 47)