Amazon.com Essentials:
David Lean focused all his talent as an epic-maker on Boris Pasternak's sweeping
novel about a doctor-poet in revolutionary Russia. The results may
sometimes veer toward soap opera, especially with the screen
frequently filled with adoring close-ups of Omar Sharif and Julie
Christie, but Lean's gift for cramming the screen with spectacle is
not to be denied. The streets of Moscow, the snowy steppes of Russia,
the house in the country taken over by ice; these are re-created with
Lean's unerring sense of grandness. The movie is so lush and so long
that it becomes an irresistible wallow, even when logic suffers--like
Gone with the
Wind before it and Titanic
after. Sharif, who achieved stardom in Lean's previous film, Lawrence of
Arabia, mostly looks noble, but the supporting cast is spiky:
Rod Steiger as a fat-cat monster, Tom Courtenay as a self-righteous
revolutionary, and Klaus Kinski and Alec Guinness in smaller
roles. Geraldine Chaplin, in her adult debut, plays the doctor's
compliant wife. Robert Bolt's screenplay won one of the film's five
Oscars, with another going to perhaps the most immediately
recognizable element of the movie: Maurice Jarre's romantic music, with its
hugely popular "Lara's Theme" weaving in and out of a swooning
score. --Robert Horton
Amazon.com Essentials:
David Lean focused all his talent as an epic-maker on Boris Pasternak's sweeping
novel about a doctor-poet in revolutionary Russia. The results may
sometimes veer toward soap opera, especially with the screen
frequently filled with adoring close-ups of Omar Sharif and Julie
Christie, but Lean's gift for cramming the screen with spectacle is
not to be denied. The streets of Moscow, the snowy steppes of Russia,
the house in the country taken over by ice; these are re-created with
Lean's unerring sense of grandness. The movie is so lush and so long
that it becomes an irresistible wallow, even when logic suffers--like
Gone with the
Wind before it and Titanic
after. Sharif, who achieved stardom in Lean's previous film, Lawrence of
Arabia, mostly looks noble, but the supporting cast is spiky:
Rod Steiger as a fat-cat monster, Tom Courtenay as a self-righteous
revolutionary, and Klaus Kinski and Alec Guinness in smaller
roles. Geraldine Chaplin, in her adult debut, plays the doctor's
compliant wife. Robert Bolt's screenplay won one of the film's five
Oscars®, with another going to perhaps the most immediately
recognizable element of the movie: Maurice Jarre's romantic music, with its
hugely popular "Lara's Theme" weaving in and out of a swooning
score. --Robert Horton
