On Dr. Zhivago

By Thomas Resch, senior history major and English minor at Silver Lake College

Despite the fact that I’m writing this for an English Department, I’m not actually going to write about anything I’ve read, and not even a book, but rather a movie, and an exceptionally good movie at that: Dr. Zhivago (1965).  However, this is not a film review either; Dr. Zhivago has much to tell us about literature and reading and the writer’s craft, and even the life of a reader, for it tells the life of a poet.  At over three hours in length, the film has much room for many plot twists and abrupt changes in the lives of the characters, but the plot in essence is quite simple: a Soviet general in a 1950’s setting is seeking the daughter of his long deceased half-brother, Dr. Yuri Zhivago.  The film then goes on to describe the long series of events which lead up to Zhivago meeting Lara at a World War I field hospital, Zhivago’s marriage to Tonya, and his eventual rediscovery of Lara in a village in the Ural mountains, leading to an affair. As though being caught between the love of his wife Tonya and his affections for Lara were not cruel enough on the gentle-hearted Yuri, he is also caught up in the dehumanizing, cruel forces of the Russian Revolution, which proves to be an everlasting sword of fate over his life.

Thus, Dr. Zhivago is essentially a flashback, a glimpse into the past lives of the characters.  In the film, this flashback is lived through windows: characters are repeatedly viewed through panes of glass, or else one character may even be watching another character, so that the audience is ultimately watching someone watch someone else through a window.  It is through these windows that we can view another world, a world nonetheless unattainable to us.  The glass is a transparent but impassable barrier: you may look, but may not touch.  And is this not what literature does to the reader? Does not every poem, play, or novel place us symbolically before a window into another world? They are windows also into the souls of the characters, human beings like us, albeit fictional, but human nonetheless, who experience all that life offers: love, joy, loss, sorrow.  Through literature we can share in their lives by the viewing, but still remain bystanders only: we cannot physically experience these characters. The window appears to be unbreakable, but must it be broken at all…?

In a later scene of Dr. Zhivago, after his wife and son have left for Paris, he is left hiding in his old childhood home with Lara, passing the long Russian winter in solitude.  When they first enter the house, the pair passes through several halls, and the viewer is led each time through a glass door, until the last room is entered.  Here, Zhivago is filled with visible emotion and joy, as he finds an old desk, upon which, he explains to Lara, he learnt to write.  As the days wear on, Zhivago, reunited with his beloved Lara, finds himself writing love poetry in nocturnal bursts of inspiration. He does this despite all the cruelty and hate and confusion surrounding him in revolutionary Russia.  In this dehumanizing situation, in which Zhivago was told that the “personal life is dead,” even having his earlier poetry condemned as “personal” and “petty,” the poet, by taking up his pen, boldly affirms his life and humanity.  By this creative act, by gushing forth his passions, Zhivago proclaims that the personal life is more alive than ever!  His poetry becomes his personal life, indeed, it becomes his very self, his soul and his humanity, as his deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings are immortalized in bold, black ink.  Thus written, it is now a window into, and even a mirror of, Zhivago’s soul. We, the reader, having viewed this baring of humanity, it then becomes ensconced in our consciousness and our memory, and lives on in us through the sharing.  There is no need to break through the window after all, for no barrier can prevent such a communication of soul to soul and heart to heart.

Thomas Resch is currently a senior studying for his bachelor's degree in history, with minors in English and theology. He resides near Manitowoc.