It isn't shoddy (except for the music), it isn't soap opera; it's stately, respectable and dead: the photography static, the comings and goings without rhythm. It's like watching a gigantic task of stone masonry, executed by unmoved movers.

| Sep 19, 2023

Doctor Zhivago, in the film version, is a work of art to match the novel and even excel it in some respects.

| May 12, 2021

A masterpiece of emotional resonance and melodramatic romanticism.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 24, 2020

[Doctor Zhivago] is, in its skill and finish, everything a "big" picture should be and rarely is.

| Mar 4, 2020

A true Saturday afternoon extravaganza.

| Dec 4, 2019

...still the best epic around...

| Jun 27, 2019

David Lean has made a stunning motion picture from Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize novel.

| Mar 5, 2018

Despite the grim and brooding background, Zhivago has a surging buoyant spirit that is unquenchable. Doctor Zhivago is more than a masterful motion picture; it is a life experience.

| Dec 22, 2016

One of those rare film adaptations which, unless you have already read the book, makes you wonder why anyone ever bothered to make the film at all.

| Apr 29, 2016

Maurice Jarre's music is as beguiling as ever and Lean squeezes all the pathos that he can out of the romance between Sharif's Yuri Zhivago and Julie Christie's febrile and gorgeous Lara Antipova.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2015

The best one can say of Doctor Zhivago is that it is an honest failure.

| Dec 1, 2015

Epic seems too small a word for the sweeping ambition and romance of Doctor Zhivago.

| Dec 1, 2015

This adaptation of Boris Pasternak's classic novel has all the sweep and stateliness that characterised David Lean's mastery of the epic.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 27, 2015

Lean and Bolt pay tribute to a Tolstoyan ambition in Pasternak's samizdat novel, and also to a real contemporary relevance: the story of a suppressed writer.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 26, 2015

Demands everything from the viewer while offering little in return, with Lean coming across like a despised schoolmaster not wanting to open himself up to his braying students.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 26, 2015

Yes it's old-fashioned and sappy. But it's impossible not to swoon.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 24, 2015

Whatever its flaws, films made with this much chutzpah last forever. Doctor Zhivago wears its daunting runtime like the lightest of shawls and, even after all these years, it's still worth surrendering your heart to.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 23, 2015

...an apocalypse movie in the guise of a romantic period piece.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 3, 2015

Epic drama combines romance, politics, mature themes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2010

it is to be respected for the massive success and artistry of the decade in which it was made

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 13, 2010