Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

David Lean’s Doc­tor Zhivago

In some ways it is unfor­tu­nate that I saw the film first. Hav­ing fin­ished the reread of the novel, I now see the book as suf­fer­ing, at least in trans­la­tion, from the mouth­piece syn­drome at times, and in need of some edit­ing. As in, at sev­eral points in the novel, char­ac­ters engage in extended dia­logue that seem out of place, given the cir­cum­stances. That extended dia­logue strikes me as more about Paster­nak and his views than some­thing organic, grow­ing out from the lives of the char­ac­ters them­selves. While I love the novel, I think it would have been much stronger with some solid edit­ing to remove such pas­sages. I also think Paster­nak included too many char­ac­ters to fol­low, to care about, to have sym­pa­thy for, and prob­a­bly could have done away with most of the epi­logue altogether.

David Lean’s pow­er­ful image of Yuri on the trol­ley, see­ing his Lara after so many years, and hav­ing a heart attack before he can catch her, is not in the novel. Zhivago does have the heart attack, stum­bles from the trol­ley, but he does not see Lara, any­where. He was not try­ing to find her at that moment. I think I like David Lean’s inven­tion more, though the crit­ics mostly didn’t. They saw it as manip­u­la­tive and soppy. I see it as in keep­ing with Yuri’s near help­less­ness in the face of so much of life pass­ing before him. Irony taken to the universal.

In some ways, the movie improves upon the book by stream­lin­ing and focus­ing (while still last­ing 200 min­utes), but it also loses most of Paternak’s novel of ideas, his mys­ti­cism and his dis­cus­sions about Russ­ian his­tory and soul. It is also prob­a­bly too roman­tic, too beau­ti­ful a film for the world depicted in the novel. Lean, I think, focuses more on roman­ti­cally suf­fer­ing hearts than death and destruc­tion through rev­o­lu­tions and wars. Paster­nak was try­ing to tell the epic story of Rus­sia, not really attempt­ing a romance. Iron­i­cally, Lean leaves out the very mov­ing scene of Lara com­ing back for Yuri’s wake, keen­ing for him, lost in the moment and in the past they shared. Paster­nak adds more emo­tional force to that scene by sug­gest­ing Lara’s fate the next day, or the day after.

I think Pasternak’s bal­ance between the epic his­tor­i­cal sweep and the roman­tic suf­fer­ings of his main char­ac­ters is stronger, and stays with you longer. The film is beau­ti­fully tragic, but more on the sur­face, more an ideal vision than blood and guts real.

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It may well be that no West­ern direc­tor could do the novel jus­tice, espe­cially not in 1965, with the Cold War still hot. Some­day a great Russ­ian direc­tor will no doubt come closer to its essence. Though, in a strange twist of fate, it was the CIA, we now know, that pushed to have Pasternak’s novel pub­lished in Russ­ian to help him gain the Nobel Prize — which he later rejected. Ivan Tol­stoy, who broke the story last year, says that Paster­nak knew noth­ing about the con­nec­tion. One won­ders what the great poet would say about that meet­ing of West and East.

In still another tragic, ironic twist, after Pasternak’s death his mis­tress, Olga Ivin­skaya, the inspi­ra­tion for Lara, was arrested by the KGB again and forced into a labor camp in Siberia. Her daugh­ter also served time in those camps. Under inter­na­tional pres­sure, Olga was released after four years of mis­ery. Prior to that, Ivin­skaya had been arrested, tor­tured and sent to the Gulag in 1949. Paster­nak was reunited with his mis­tress in 1953.

It is all too often the case that author­i­ties con­demn artists for their depic­tions of real life, while con­firm­ing those depic­tions. Paster­nak was harassed and almost deported for Doc­tor Zhivago, while some of his loved ones suf­fered worse fates. With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, it strikes this reader that Paster­nak went easy on the Soviet sys­tem that tried to drive him to his death.