Starring: Julie Christie and some other people
Review Rating: SKA8 (Seriously Kicks Ass To The 8th Power)
IMDB Review
Buy this film from Amazon.com

Ahhhh? Russia. I turn red just thinking about it. Julie Christie plays
Laura, and holy blessed shit, she sets a new limit for pulchritude.
Warning:
View this film through a pinhole poked in a black sheet of paper, or Julie
Christie's beauty will convert your corneas into a viscous froth. Our
father
who art in Julie Christie, this woman is so radiant that watching her endure
political upheaval, epic weather, famine, and Marxist lobotomies makes me
all
sideways in the tummy, like I hit zero gravity and inhaled Jupiter through
one nostril.

Ever notice that Julie Christie and Jesus Christ have the same initials?
She
should have been named Jexus Christie, or Julie Christ because her eyes are
Godhead filtered through two Ocean-sized blueberries. The dude who plays
her
boy-toy has unbelievable peepers too, which haunt your humanity in a Kahlil
Gibran kinda way. In fact, has anyone ever seen those two in the same room?

Dr. Zhivago is that same old
boy-marries-first-girl-has-family-boy-meets-second-girl-gets-dehumanized-by-
im
personal-populist-movement-boy-gets-girl-in-ice-castle-mansion...formula?
What's cool here is the dance between the personal and the impersonal
(Russian accent: sahry moi droog, nyet tranzpersonal today). On one hand,
we
have Julie Christie's character Laura, and the dude who is in love with her,
whose name isn't important, just know he's the one who gets to kiss, hug and
cuttle Julie Christie, and he looks like Kahlin Gibran. Now check this out,
THAT dude already has a wife and kids, YEAH, can you believe that shit?
He's
got a wife and kids- his wife is like,

(Russian accent) "Priveat! Dey communeez tuuk over dey Kundry yesderday, and
peeple dey ahr gedeen shot in dey street, ant vee ahr a rrridch vamily zo
dey
hate uhs, ANT vee stahrveen, NYET, I mean vee fahkeen STAHRVEEN!!"

and the Kahlil Gibran dude is all like

"Oh, bohje', uhhh...I dink I forgeht zometeen in Sain Peeterzburgh...I mahst
go to geht dis..."

then he runs off to hook up for another nuclear nookie session with the only
woman beautiful enough to distract a man from utter socio-political upheaval
(If the Marxists had just made banners, murals, and statues of Julie
Christie, the world would be Soviet right now. Who ever thought looking at
Lenin would make people wanna give up their property?)

Dr. Zhivago, or as I call it LAURA'S EYES!, uses the Laura-Kahlil Gibran
love
nova plus sub-plots of his wife, their family, the revolution, and a host of
other characters who aren't played by Julie Christie, uses all THAT to pull
us into the interiors of our humanity- into the personal domain. The
intimate
connections among these struggling, brave beings is set against an epic
swing
of the historical pendulum. Pissed off about the gruesome nature of life as
a biped in Russia, the Marxists started shouting marvelous slogans like

"HEY!, vee sick of eedeen bloha frozen pohtaytos and vee wahreen gunny
sacks"

and

"HEY, dohz fahkeen Czars ahr rrridch, ant vee bloha pohtaysto-eedeen
gunny-sack wahreen peasants!"

and "Dis gunny sacks itchy! Leht'z kill Czars!!"

So they, went to town, did some naughties, and took over. Central to their
new way of doing (and not doing) things was the idea that PERSONAL = BAD,
that individualism was, well... selfish, and putting ones ego before the
health and welfare of the collective was a serious fuxing faux-paux from
here
and out, so just take your little love stories and family histories and bury
them in the mass grave of collective unconscious, cuz baby, we're communal
now! Whoo!! Of course in retrospect those Marxists were right SO. With
the
benefit of historical reflection, it's evident how communism transformed
Russia, all the Soviet satellites, and China. Ask any Tibetan, if you can
find one.

My point is the film brilliantly illustrates the vertigo that sets in when
the individual / collective dance gets thrown out of whack. If the
collective goes bonkers and says "Individualism is evil, individualists are
an enemy of the state", then whatcha gonna do? Stop falling in love? Stop
having a discreet frontal structure boundary that assembles and categorizes
phenomena into an amalgam called "me"? NO baby, NO, you're beautiful, you
just keep being YOU, no matter what those nasty Marxists do to you with that
hammer and sickle. But, if things swing too far the other direction, and
it's all the ME mantra of

(Shoe gazer accent)"hey, fuxx the collective man, look out for #1! Yo,
societeez bullshit, I just wanna rock and get baked with my brahhhhzzzz",

then, you get the music business. A good groove has an inside and outside,
individual and collective, both unfolding and evolving in balance. Of
course
in reality that only happens in the Netherlands, but we Dutchless dolts dare
to dream...

I know what you're thinking, all this BEGS the question, dammit: How many
cameras were destroyed in early attempts to film Julie Christie's face?

Seven.

Seven high-end cameras were completely ruined. The first three melted when
placed inside a thirty foot radius of J.C, the next three suffered varying
degrees of damage as scientists tinkered with protective filters and
screens,
and number SEVEN? Yo, they turned Seven on, cued Julie Christie, and as her
gaze migrated toward the lens, Seven let out what many claim was an audible
sigh, then dissolved into a field of subtle energy at the Point of All
Places. It was camera number Eight, the first to feature a Divine Minimizer
(the diffraction device engineered by Draper Laboratories which diffuses the
volcanic Causal Light pouring from J.C's eyes to safe levels for equipment)
which allowed actual filming to commence.

Shortcomings: Potential blindness from watching the Mystery unveiled through
Ocean-sized blueberries in Julie Christie's head.

Soundtrack: Rocks, except that one saccharine theme they always play sounds
like ice cream music. I suppose it provides a poignant contrast to the
dissonant intervals of their lives.

Visual Stuff: Snow scenes that really blow (in a good way), a monolithic
locomotive that carries a disgruntled revolutionary its belly (remember the
lawyer character that Martin Short used to play on Saturday night live, the
dude who wore bottle rim glasses, had a cigarette with a HUGE ash hanging
off
it, and he would be sweating his ass off while 60 Minutes interviewed him?
WELL, put him in a Russian uniform and voila'....). The Cinematography in
Dr. Zhivago holds everything from intricate studies in facial expression to
sweeping, majestic landscapes. Winter is definitely one of the most
important characters in this film, and networks seem to love showing this
flick around Christmas. Which brings us back to my theory about Julie
Christ...