Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Directed by David Lean
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
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What critics compared Doctor Zhivago to
This conundrum has faced, and arguably gotten the better of, all three previous attempts to put the novel on the screen, most notably John Schlesinger's lavish, well-cast but lethargic 1967 version, which even Julie Christie, in the wake of her Darling/Doctor Zhivago ascendency, couldn't help bring to ground.
However, much like David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, the film takes its time exploring the emotional experiences of its characters and ultimately allowing love to take its time instead of being a force one quickly jumps into.
The same holds true for Vladimir Kulich ("Firestorm," "Crash") as the warrior leader, while the great Omar Sharif ("Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago") as well as Diane Venora ("True Crime," "Heat") are barely used to any appreciable extent.
Something like this always seems to happen with Robert Bolt's screenplays (think Lawrence of Arabia , Doctor Zhivago ): after laying out a fierce political crisis within an especially unstable impasse of global history, the movies quickly take a detour into picture-postcard scenery and/or the outright hagiography of at-best ambivalent crusaders.
Screenwriter Robert Bolt ("Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago," "A Man for All Seasons"), music composer Ennio Morricone ("The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," "The Untouchables"), and director Roland Joffé ("The Killing Fields," "City of Joy") give us a moving, inspiring, even rousing tale set against a politically sensitive and socially volatile backdrop.
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The Wind Rises is a lovingly-constructed wonder, a grand and sweeping work that harkens back to Hollywood epics of yesteryear like Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.
For veteran film fans, it is an oddity that Geraldine Chaplin, from “Doctor Zhivago,” has a small part as a school official.
At any rate, the film's narrative progression is a hell of a lot closer to a Towering Inferno than it is to the film's most often-cited analogue, Gone with the Wind : that film, like Doctor Zhivago or Reds , follows a single star-crossed couple through years of history, full of different incidents; Titanic takes place over four days, and involves a love affair interrupted by the most famous maritime disaster of the 20th Century.
He's already made "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2"; with "Titanic" he has his eye on "Doctor Zhivago" / "Lawrence of Arabia" territory.
The young Keira Knightley, a dead ringer for Winona Ryder, has yet to convince me she can act — Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t count, and she was adorably awful in the television adaptation of Doctor Zhivago.
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As a hagiography for Brooks, it's promisingly passive-aggressive (he's portrayed as a teddy bear with a gargantuan ego), yet it touts when it should lament the overqualified crew of Spaceballs, including the production designer of Doctor Zhivago, Alfred Hitchcock's storyboard artist, ILM's Peter Donen, and still others.
Visually stunning, "Frozen" provides a world of icicles and snow that makes this the most cold-feeling movie since "Doctor Zhivago," and yet it has heart.