Film Review: Doctor Zhivago + BFI Love

'Turbulent were the times and fiery was the love story of Zhivago, his wife, and the passionate, tender Lara.' Thus gushes the original tagline of Doctor Zhivago, David Lean's rambling 1965 epic, which follows the difficult life of poet and physician Yuri Zhivago. Entering and exiting the story at various intervals are his long-suffering wife Tonya and his mistress Lara, who struggles under the desires of Victor Komarovsky, a rich businessman with dubious motives.

Despite a lengthy runtime of 200 minutes, this is but a fraction of the extensive narrative first published in 1957 by Russian novelist Boris Pasternak. The film misses many crucial details of the original novel, bookended by a cliché Hollywood framing device which provides the rather bleak tale with some sense of satisfying closure. Such trims cause the motivations of many of the characters to be difficult to understand. Zhivago's forgiving nature and romantic soul seem constantly at odds with the cold cynical world around him, and his wife seems impossibly accepting that he should suddenly leave her for another woman. Lara's desire for the corpulent Komarovsky is played too safe to be believable. Lean's attention to detail, however, is meticulous, and still stands up after fifty years despite the picture-postcard portrayal of a bloody revolution. Maurice Jarre's 'Lara's Theme' is iconic, if repetitive.

In the end, strangled by Production Code censorship, Lean's film rings emotionally cold compared with the charged remake from 2002. But it is nonetheless a classic, a triumph of colossal set design, daring vision and the clout of the studio budget. Its melancholy comes from the memory of the recently late Omar Sharif, his death echoing the film itself which heralded the end of the age of sweeping epics made to be seen on the big screen. I am glad I got to see it up there when I did, thanks to the BFI's Love season here.

Love is Dangerous... Wider Reading 4: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

"The business of the novelist," author Thomas Hardy once wrote, "is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things." It is the latter Hardy captures in one of his best and most well-known novels, and equals even the likes of Charles Dickens in his ability to move the reader on behalf of those who society and history have discounted. Tess, a milkmaid, is scarred by her encounter with her calculating, usurping "cousin," and is a heroine without wealth or position. Despite this, her story has a heart-breaking pity within it that reveals the universal condition of people and society in the late 19th century.

The action of the novel is largely confined to the rural back lanes and fields of Wessex - the fictional corner of south-west England made so brilliantly real by Hardy - a technique employed by the author to demonstrate how actions have far-reaching consequences, even if they only affect a small number of people. However, the skill of the writer means that the reader is left with such an exact impression of rural life in the late 19th century, that the whole of society can be found in the one place.

Love is the dominant theme in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and is the driving force behind most of the tragic events within. The desire that Alec D'Urberville feels for Tess is the main reason for his attack, and her hatred of him because of this is partly what drove her to murder. Contrastingly, the love that Angel Clare and Tess feel for each other is the conventional, romantic kind, which makes it all the more tragic when they are separated because of his prejudices.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Quotations

Love is Forbidden... Wider Reading 2: Lolita

"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style" opines Humbert Humbert, erstwhile college professor, aesthete and tortured romantic. Establishing him as one of the greatest writers in the English language, Lolita is Vladimir Nabokov's impossibly funny and rapturously beautiful story of Humbert's total, catastrophic obsession with twelve-year-old Lolita Haze. At once prim and predatory, Humbert will stop at nothing in his frenzy to possess his "nymphet," first marrying her mother and then embarking with Lolita on a journey across the American landscape, through roadside diners and five-dollar-a-night motels. A once sublime and awful, cruel and irresistible, Lolita is a triumphant masterpiece of twentieth century literature.

"Lolita" has often been described as "the only convincing love story of the twentieth century." Although the novel was banned on publication on the grounds that it was pornographic, Lolita is most definitely a story about love, not lust. Indeed, many types of love are explored within the novel, and all are experienced by one man. While Humbert's love for Lolita borders on the obsessive, it is also unrequited, despite the duo's spending upwards of three years together. The emphasis on "forbidden" love is questionable, however, as the taboo element of the novel changes with the time in which it is read.

As I mentioned before, most contemporary readers dismissed the novel as too explicit and shocking, with a level of public outrage not seen since "Lady Chatterley's Lover." However, to the modern twenty-first century reader, the actual words and scenes within the novel itself are fairly harmless, compared with the level of candidness now popular in fiction. The subject matter, however, remains just as shocking in its dealing with underage sex and paedophilia, though this is up to the opinions of the reader.

I personally find the novel both appalling and enlightening, and it is one of my favourite books. The sophisticated language used by Nabokov is untouchable, and exactly mirrors the conflict of the protagonist.

Lolita - Quotations