Get ready for it--here comes my response to Dr. Zhivago.

First, fairly early on in the movie it becomes apparent that the two people don't end up together in the end and that's always strike one in my opinion. Second, he's married but in love with Lara, a woman who bewitches all the men around her because she's beautiful: that's original. Third, the music blows. Three strikes you're out.

Now, we'll start with the music because it's famous and everybody quotes it and thinks it's just so darned amazing. I'm over it. I've heard the theme song many times (who hasn't?) and found it trite and repetitive, but assumed that when I heard the full score along with watching the move I would be moved by its majesty. I wasn't. It's still trite and repetitive three hours later. Moving on...

I hate movies where old dude falls in love with beautiful, slightly broken woman at first glance. When I say hate, I don't want you to misunderstand me or think, for even the briefest of seconds, that I don't mean to imply absolute disgust and revulsion; I despise these movies. To top it all off dear old Doctor Z, the man we are all supposed to love and support and admire, cheats on his wife with his true love whom he goes on to write an amazing book of poems about.

Let's digress for a second and examine what it would mean to be this wonderful man's romantic partner either as wife or mistress. As wife you are loved, but ignored--respected but never enough, eventually left to your own devices (not wholly his fault with the revolution going on and those damn commies) but never truly yearned for. As your mistress you are loved and worshiped--it's impossible to miss the Petrachan conventions in this movie, especially with her named "Lara." Ayn Rand couldn't be that obvious and she writes 1,000 page books, complete with 90 page speeches at the end to make sure you got the point. Regardless, at the end of the day, it breaks his heart but he sends you off for your own good to have his love child on your own and die nameless in some laborer's camp. What are you gonna do when you're trying to love each other amid the Russian revolution? It's all the communists' fault.

Okay, so Dr. Z is a man, and thankfully Alec Guiness is there at key moments to remind us how good of a man, and after three hours the impression is that he was better than some and worse than others. Oh, I'm moved by the depth of that message. Lara is a freakishly flat female lead. She's tough, but she has to be. Seduced by a man with complete power over her at 17 and married to a man who assumes complete power and then abandons her not long after, a chick's gotta toughen up. But everyone that comes in contact with her is at least "a little bit in love with her" if not more. Because she's beautiful? Her personality is developed nearly enough explain her charisma otherwise.

The cinematography was great--the musical instrument theme was a little to Rosebud for my tastes, but it works as a theme throughout the whole movie. The acting was fine, but the dialogue wasn't the most moving ever written. This no doubt aids in the flatness of the characters.

So--as always seems to happen when I watch movies that are considered "classics" of romance--I'm left irritated and unfulfilled. It seems the stories we elevate of human love personify the weakness of people to resist each other, love at first sight, and the idea that sometimes you have a really shitty life, but so long as you loved someone greatly at some point (regardless of ANY context) you've succeeded in some way.

And so the cult of romantic love in the Western tradition continues.

There are so many reasons I'm single, and none of them are surprising.