Dr Zhivago is also my favorite, I can’t decide who was the better character, Zhivago or Pasha (Strelnikov).
My favorite character in Zhivago is by far Gen. Yevgraf (the narrator, Alec Guiness). You can hear in his inflections that he, looking back, was not all that enamored with the methods and brutal outcomes of Communism.
He was on fire, at first, like Pasha Antipov (Strelnikov), who flipped out and wanted mommy when it all came crashing down around him.
Then, reality set in for Yevgraf. He seems to have valued Russian-ism much more highly than Soviet-ism in the end. In that sense, he was a patriot, which is admirable. And he seemed to value family and individual artistic achievement more than the sterile collectivism in the end; and in that sense, he was not only a patriot but a downright civilized one. And he was telling the story because it needed to be told, for all the right reasons.
One thing I love about this film, aside from the fact that David Lean shows himself to have been Rembrandt with a 70mm camera, is the fact that for every situation I see on the world scene today, I can quote you a cogent line from the movie.
I’m glad to know there are at least two other Zhivago devotees on here (beaversmom is another).
I used to have the LP from Dr Z...
Omar Shariff was great...