Watching Dr Zhivago again.

When did I first see this film?  1965
I was so young, so much yet to do - I knew very little of revolution, ….

Now - do I prefer Strelnikov to the Dr, with his infidelity and charm?
Julie Christie like a cover of Vogue.
I had a lacy scarf like hers which I knitted.

My mother and I used to play and sing Lara’s song.
For years I always played it whenever I visited.
At 97 my sweet mother made me cry.
She said, ‘ I didn’t know you played the piano dear’.
She had taught me to play from the age of five.

Its so calm and slow, widescreen.

How beautiful Russia is in the snow, how lovely when I visited in the 80’s, the anniversary of Yury Gagarin’s  flight in space - me wanting a baby, looking at the soldiers in Gorky Park, before, before I met Kevin to love me, before he died, murdered by two strangers for no reason,  before the others, before, before, until Pedyr loved me, but died of cancer, before my new life alone….

Luxury and vice - and why did my mother never point out the immorality - nor in Gigi- just loving  the music and the clothes, the beauty - leaving the meaning for me to sort out alone.

Ignoring anything unpleasant until some later time - later when it has to be seen.

Ignoring what’s under your nose, and secrets, disgusting family secrets, maybe I have never heard them all.

Only the romance and imagination encouraged.

And is this the essence of Dr Zhivago?

Now I see the disgusting rape where Komarovsky says Lara is a slut, where the writer makes her give in to it - and break Pasha’s heart - shoots the rapist but miss killing him and he lets her go.

Well it’s all believable. And as we know the plot so ironic when Komarovsky says he gives Lara to the Dr as a wedding present.

‘Happy men don’t volunteer’. So the narrator assumes Pasha was not happy with Lara and their baby.

Do all revolutions fail?
The stupid First World War.
Chance meetings leading to love.
As they can.

‘I wish they’d decide which gang of hooligans constitutes the government of this country.’ Says the Uncle.
How apt for us today.

Unconsummated love as the strongest? Longing and a song - oh yes, always the way…..

But we are a mixture of romance and reality and the story gets this across so well.
Half way through I cry, when Tanya has not told her husband she has no fuel and she weeps.

Balalaika ……

The scene I best remember is Strelnikov  on his train - but I remember it more dramatically like Turner’s ‘Rain steam and speed’.

Then I remember when Yury walks down a path and is captured - I have always - before that. —  been afraid my father would get lost for ever when he would get off a train before our stop - and stroll on the platform despite my mother’s pleadings - it’s later than this first time that Yury gets forced to serve the Reds as a doctor.

Fancy having a country retreat with Russian domes like this wealthy family, with  a nearby cottage to live in.

Now I can’t remember how it ends.

The Tsar and his family is shot.

Yury gets used to his double life with two women, but guilt makes him give up Lara.
Oh - he gets captured on the way home - so I got that mixed up with the train.

The Cruelty of war.
We see it come into Yury’s  mind to run away, he thinks he sees his wife.
Gets back to Lara- his wife has gone away back to Moscow.

Is this why men want two women - to save them should there be a crisis?
Lara met Tanya
Tanya being deported. She left the balalaika.

Oh now I remember the odious Komarovsky will help - he is a survivor. He has some feeling that he must help Lara.They refuse the help and go to Varykinow.
Hardy would let them die -  what does Solzhenitsyn do?


  ‘The private life is dead’ - it makes the revolution seem bad - and it’s proved to be of course untrue.

If they had met before.

Victor comes still to save them. Says Strelnikov is dead and was a murderer, had been captured and killed himself.

‘Is your delicacy so exorbitant that you would sacrifice a woman and a child to it?’ Victor - so Yury saves her and loses her. Tanya is pregnant with Yury’s child.
He remains in Moscow - suitably with a heart problem, sees Lara one day,  runs to her and dies before he reaches her. His poetry lives on. Lara meets his brother at the funeral , she lost the child years before - picture of Stalin, her child is found later by the brother- Komarovsky let go of her hand.

She plays the balalaika!

I’m watching it on a small tv but with the memory of sitting in the shared darkness of a cinema with the wide expanses of Russia before me and the unknown expanse of what my life might be and the power of love and death as they have bowled me over since.