Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 208: The Doctor Will See You Now

As we've seen throughout this journey, David Lean is a director who has grand vision and scope. With Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia both giving a different perspective on the war film, Lean definitely excels in telling stories set around times of conflict. This is true of Doctor Zhivago, Lean's lavish adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel, which starts in 1913 and takes in both World War I and the Russian Revolution. These events are seen through the eyes of Omar Sharif's Yuri Zhivago, a frustrated poet who becomes a doctor and therefore is witness to a lot of the bloodshed of the time. Initially Yuri is drawn to Tonya, the daughter of the couple who raised him, and they indeed have a child together. But later, Yuri meets Lara, a complicated girl who gets married to idealistic reformer Pasha Antipov. Though, Yuri and Lara serve together during the war, what happens later means he has to care for his family first. Ultimately Doctor Zhivago is set up as a love triangle with a bit of violence and revolution thrown in for good measure. Yuri's ending is a tragic one, some would say overly so, but there was a kind of a happy ending involving the supposed daughter of Yuri and Lara.

As with all of Lean's films, Doctor Zhivago is wonderfully shot and brilliantly scored. The film won five Oscars which included the prizes for Art Direction, Costume Design and Cinematography. I personally found a lot of the shots and set pieces to be first class, these include the shot of the train coming out of the tunnel following the intermission and Yuri's attempts to attract Lara's attentions for the last time. The vast expanse of sets used was amazing while the fact that Lean's team were able to transform Spain into Russia was astounding. Maurice Jarre's score also deserves a mention and in particular 'Lara's Theme' which is still an incredibly enchanting piece of film music. One of the elements that let Doctor Zhivago down was its running time, a regular bugbear of mine, as I felt the film meandered during its 200 minutes. I also wasn't a particular fan of the character of Yuri as he always seemed to be someone on the outskirts of society and somebody who could never commit to anything. This isn't anything against Sharif's performance though I do feel he lacked chemistry with both his female leads. Julie Christie was absolutely amazing as Lara and played a completely different role to her Oscar-winning turn in Darling. Similarly Rod Steiger's brutish portrayal of Komarvosky was a scene-stealing performance. However, the only acting nomination came for Tom Courtenay as the idealistic and later bloodthirsty Pasha. I found Courtenay utterly mesmerising as he played a man who truly had passion for his cause but later had lost all of this and had now realised that he was never to have a personal life.

Overall, while not one of my favourite of Lean's films, there's no denying that Doctor Zhivago is a visually spectacular piece with some interesting performances. Though I found heavy-going occasionally, Lean seemed to have a genuine love for his characters that shone through. I just wish that Doctor Zhivago's runtime had been shaved slightly as I felt this would have made a definite improvement.

Next time we come to the last 1960s film of our search.