‘Doctor Zhivago’ Book vs. Movie

Originally ran on The Jensonian.

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THE FILM
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Directed by David Lean, screenplay by Robert Bolt
Omar Sharif as Dr. Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago | Julie Christie as Lara Antipova | Geraldine Chaplin as Tonya Gromeko | Rod Steiger as Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky | Alec Guinness as Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago | Tom Courtenay as Pavel Antipov / Strelnikov | Klaus Kinski as Hey That’s Klaus Kinski

THE BOOK
Doctor Zhivago (1957)
Written by Boris Pasternak

In 2002, legendary Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem wrote the following after Steven Soderbergh’s recent adaptation of his novel Solaris was received as a love story:

“…As Solaris‘ author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled Solaris and not Love in Outer Space.” [source]

Boris Pasternak would not live to see the film based on his Nobel-winning Doctor Zhivago, but he would be more than entitled to a similar reaction. After all, he’d spent over 50 years writing a novel he knew could have him arrested, expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers, exiled from the Soviet Union, or worse. It’s a grand historical testament rooted in his own experience of the Russian Civil War with deep concern for the philosophical and political lessons to be drawn from the period. It’s a passionate work of poetic prose that explores humanity’s role in its own political and spiritual redemption, recognizing the promise and excitement of the revolutionary movement and the struggle to pursue truth and justice in a world that seems to only reward brutality and opportunism.

David Lean’s film, meanwhile, is about a guy who can’t decide between two women while there’s also a war going on.

Granted, it’s quite good, and very much the film that Lean intended to make. We know from the two untouchable classics he made prior to Zhivago — The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia — that Lean knows his way around historical epics with many speaking characters, that address questions both timeless and specific to the setting of the narrative. Indeed, the story goes that it was precisely because of Bridge and Lawrence that Lean wanted to make a more intimate, personal film, and with Zhivago still setting the literary world on fire with its reputation as a passionate love-in-wartime epic by a patriotic Russian dissident, it makes sense why an adaptation seemed necessary and why Lean was the one to do it.

Before we get to the story, that last point is worth exploring. From the beginning, Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago has been made out to be something that it never was. The CIA seized the opportunity to use it as Cold War propaganda, publishing the Russian edition for bootleg (samizdat) distribution, and campaigning on its behalf to the Nobel Committee. Winning the Nobel Prize, after all, would back the USSR into an awkward corner, both on the world stage and its own citizenry. Pasrernak was told that going abroad to accept the award would mean he could never come home again — so the Nobel went unclaimed until his son completed the trip to Oslo in 1989.

How the manuscript made its way out of the USSR is a story in itself, having been smuggled by Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a left-winger whose membership in the Communist Party of Italy was subsequently revoked.

Fine, but what’s the damn thing about already?

Both book and film tell approximately the same narrative about the same person in the same setting, but how it’s told makes all the difference. Here’s what happens in both book and movie:

[spoilers] We meet Yuri at his mother’s funeral in a small village. In his early years he forms a friendship with Tonya. He becomes a doctor but his true passion has always been poetry. He marries Tonya and starts a family. Yuri and Lara, a nurse from the Urals, become acquainted while working in close proximity. Lara is married to Pasha, who is often said to have been recently killed by but doesn’t die until the narrator says so. Yuri has feelings for Lara. After the October Revolution (the February Revolution ousted the Tsar, the October Revolution overthrew the Provisional Government and brought the Bolsheviks to power) Yuri and Tonya flee to Varykino, where she was raised. On the way they see the fearsome revolutionary Army Commissar Strelnikov, who is actually Pasha. Once in Varykino, Yuri and Tonya begin living a quiet life, but with Lara living not far away in Yuriatin, Yuri begins an affair with her, splitting his time between the two towns and two women. He’s kidnapped by Bolshevik partisans, eventually escapes, makes it to Moscow totally alone, and dies on a tram. Lara dies in a labor camp. [/spoilers]

Though Pasternak uses a third-person omnicient narrator, Lean structures the story similarly to Lawrence of Arabia, exploring Yuri’s legacy after he has died. Yuri’s half brother Yevgraf has been searching for the young girl he believes to be his niece, Yuri’s daughter. Yevgraf’s interrogation to jog her memory becomes a framing device, of the strange variety that describes events the narrator never witnessed.

This is a fine enough decision by Lean, as telling the story exactly as Pasternak did would result in the least cinematic movie ever made. Pasternak is very much a poet, even when writing prose. His novel is broken into many parts that are then subdivided even further, beyond what could be called “chapters” that look more like stanzas. Small things are described in great detail, while enormous historical events are intentionally glossed over; the reader can practically smell the garden surrounding Varykino, while Yuri’s marriage to Tonya and the birth of their children are skipped (think Altered States). We may know the entire lineage and internal monologue of a character who only appears for one scene, while the events surrounding the October Revolution are practically background to a late-night stroll. Very little is in chronological order for the first 100 or so pages, and one may be forgiven for not knowing who is supposed to be the main character for some time.

The effect is a philosophical exploration of history being made in real time, full of moments that don’t feel as though they’ll be significant as they are happening. It’s rooted in Pasternak’s Tolstoyan worldview, that there are forces at play in the world greater than those to which we subvert our free will and individuality. We merely pass through history while nature marches on, indifferent to politics, philosophy, or revolutions. And to someone like Yuri, who is very sensitive to this notion, his enemies are not Whites or Reds, but people who cease thinking for themselves out of fear or convenience.

Lean’s take, meanwhile, turns that completely around: the world is background to Yuri’s romances. Yevgraf takes a prominent role in the film, filling in narrative gaps left by excised characters, which is a wise move by Lean. But he is often inserted where he serves no purpose, and his presence in those scenes totally alter their original meaning.

Some changes are compatible with Pasternak’s views, others stand in direct contradiction. Pasternak shows his initial sympathy for the revolutionary movement, and through Yuri, he describes how thrilling conversations could be when all of society is thinking at maximum capacity, excited by ideas and possibilities. There are three events that highlight the Russian public’s desire for revolution: a railway strike, a bloody crackdown on a peaceful protest, and a soldiers’ rebellion during World War I. The strike is not present in the film; fine, perhaps, as it does not directly contribute to the plot. Lean depicts Yuri as witnessing the doomed protest from his window when Pasternak had him nowhere near; also an acceptable change, as this gives him an opportunity to show his sympathies, and his disdain for hypocrites with power.

The rebellion, meanwhile, suggests antiwar sentiment grew out of a conspiracy by the Bolsheviks, with Yevgraf under orders to foment rebellion. It’s true that Bolsheviks did agitate among soldiers, but Pasternak showed how deeply rooted popular opinion was against the war. Additionally, this scene in the book was more about the naive officer who believed the Cossacks will delight at a superior seemingly betray his own interest by addressing them, not understanding the political and social forces at work that ultimately lead to his death. It seems to be a cheap shot, banking on anti-Soviet sentiment that everyone already incorrectly ascribes to the novel.

There are many other differences that don’t amount to too much — Pasha and Lara’s chronology, Komarovsky’s role in how the story concludes, the deletion of a scene that shows White partisans discussing antisemitic conspiracy theories, leaving out Yuri’s friends and the strange focus on Tonya’s fussy father. I can respect the desire to streamline this story for audiences and zero in on the most melodramatic and visually sweeping moments, but it feels strange to actively work against Pasternak’s stated sympathies.

Imagine being the one responsible for going through Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and mapping it out chronologically. I do not envy that person’s job.

BOOK OR MOVIE?: Book.

NEXT: Under the Skin