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. 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. This is why the book was entitled Solaris and not Love in Outer Space.” īoris 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.

“…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. 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: 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 As often as I’m able, I’ll be comparing movies with the original book/comic/radio play/TV show/board game/theme park ride.ĭirected by David Lean, screenplay by Robert Bolt The war changes everything and by reading this fictional account of one man’s journey through it, you can start to understand how and why.A good film adaptation should hold together independent of its source material, even if that means making massive changes. The war changes everything and it is during the struggle between the Tsarist Whites and the Communist Reds that is the main setting and backdrop to the entire novel. The affair starts here but Yury wants to confess all to his wife. When Yury goes to the nearest city, Yuryatin, to use the library, he meets Lara. Yury and Tonya then move to Varyniko, an estate once owned by Tonya’s grandfather but now being worked as a collective. She tells him of her daughter who she has left behind in Yuryatin, Urals where she was born. He later becomes a medical officer in the army and is stationed in a small town which is where he meets Lara who he does know from elsewhere. it is here where he meets Tonya, his wife.

Yury Zhivago starts his life in Moscow, where he goes to the university studying medicine.

He is born under Czarist rule but lives through World War I, the Revolution, and the Civil War. In the course of Yury’s life, the modern history of Russia is revealed.

Dr zhivago book