One Paragraph Movie Review: Dr Zhivago

One hundred and seventeenth film: Dr Zhivago, a long film about love, revolution, and frozen snot. The last film I watched, Dr Strangelove, had James Earl Darth Vader Jones in it, and now Dr Zhivago has Alec Obi Wan Guiness in it, but aside from a bunch of soldiers and a frozen landscape, that’s where the Star Wars similarities end. This thing looks bloody marvellous, all stark landscapes, opulent frocks, headscarves, oblique lighting and Omar Sharif’s startlingly large eyeballs, and while it kiiiind of romanticises cheating on your wife over a decade or so, as long as you fast forward through the seven minutes of overture and opening credits, the three and a half hours just fly past. A love story with a couple of oh really coincidences in it — Russia’s quite a big place but Yuri and Lara happen upon one another by chance a lot — it has both charm and a sense of political unease about it, like Fiji. Definitely and absolutely a movie worth ticking off the list, but perhaps not one for watching twice. Three and a bit big furry hats out of five.