Watching this movie was also triggered by my reading Stalin's Daughter and thinking "I've heard of this movie / book for decades, but don't really know what it's about." And then I was at the shower for Angela and one of the love song clues was "Lara's Theme" - I knew right away it was from Dr. Zhivago . . . but how? From crossword puzzles?
So I finally borrowed it from the library. And then I kept renewing it because I didn't have time to watch it. And then Louie and I started to watch it, but had trouble with our DVD/Bluray player. Then I watched it on my laptop . . . and after two hours was only at the intermission!!!
In that first half of the movie, I was confused. Why does Lara become her mother's boyfriend's lover? She is initially uncomfortable with him and he's a creep! Then when I ran out of time, I decided to read the summary version on Wikipedia. Ah. That helped. But it also made me decide to NOT read the book. I feel as though I have a better understanding of the storyline (by no means a thorough one!) and I do not have a burning need to read Pasternak's original work <nor the translated version in English since I don't read Russian!!>
I liked seeing the young Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, etc. I liked getting a sense of the historical perspective.
Here's a blurb from Wikipedia (10.7.16) on the novel:
"The plot of Doctor Zhivago is long and intricate. It can be
difficult to follow for two main reasons: first, Pasternak employs many
characters, who interact with each other throughout the book in
unpredictable ways, and second, he frequently introduces a character by
one of his/her three names,
then subsequently refers to that character by another of the three
names or a nickname, without expressly stating that he is referring to
the same character. To avoid this confusion, the summary below uses a
character's full name when the character is first introduced."
