Doctor Zhivago is an American 1965 epic drama–romance film directed by David Lean, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. The film is loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. It has remained popular for decades, and as of 2012 is the eighth highest-grossing film of all time in the United States, adjusted for inflation.

Plot
The film takes place mostly against a backdrop of World War I, the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. A narrative framing device, set in the late 1940s to early 1950s, involves KGB Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness) searching for the daughter of his half brother, doctor Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago (Omar Sharif), and Larissa ("Lara") Antipova (Julie Christie). Yevgraf believes a young woman, Tonya Komarovskaya (Rita Tushingham) may be his niece, and tells her the story of her father's life.

We first meet the protagonist Yuri Zhivago as a young boy who is orphaned after his mother's death. He is given his mother's balalaika, a Russian musical instrument, which becomes a symbol of the creativity that runs in his family. He is taken in by his mother's friends, Alexander 'Sasha' (Ralph Richardson) and Anna (Siobhán McKenna) Gromeko — and grows up with their daughter Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). We next see Zhivago as a medical student in training, but a poet at heart, who declares that he wants to be a family doctor rather than a medical researcher. Tonya returns after a trip to Paris, wearing the latest fashions. Shortly after, Yuri marries Tonya because her mother expects him to do it, but does so without much enthusiasm.

In a parallel plot-line, Lara, a dressmaker's daughter and schoolgirl, becomes involved in an affair with Victor Ipolitovich Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), her mother's (Adrienne Corri) lover. That same night, the idealistic reformer Pavel Pavlovich ("Pasha") Antipov (Tom Courtenay) is wounded with a sabre cut across his face by hussars during a peaceful street protest. Pasha runs to Lara, whom he wants to marry, to treat his wound, and asks her to hide a gun he picked up at the demonstration. He declares that the days of peaceful protests are over; a new spirit of cynicism and militancy are what is needed, which symbolize his and others turning to Bolshevism (Communism) as the answer to the autocracy of Tsar Nicholas II. Zhivago witnesses the same event from his balcony, seeing the brutality of the Tsarist hussars. He is deeply shaken by the event, attempts to save the wounded in the street, and is told by a Tsarist officer to get off the street.

Lara's mother discovers her affair with Komarovsky and attempts suicide. Komarovsky summons help from the physician who is Zhivago's medical professor and Zhivago arrives as the physician's assistant. He sees Lara for the first time. When Komarovsky later learns of Lara's intentions to marry Pasha, he tries to dissuade Lara, and then rapes her. In revenge, Lara takes the pistol she has been hiding for Pasha and shoots Komarovsky during a Christmas Eve party also attended by Zhivago, wounding Komorovski. At this point the separate plots merge and all the characters become aware of each other. Komarovsky insists that no action be taken against Lara, who is escorted out by Pasha. Zhivago tends Komarovsky's wound. Although enraged by Lara's affair with Komarovski, the formerly idealistic Pasha marries Lara, and later they have a daughter, Katya.

With the beginning of World War I, the Russian Empire declares war on the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire; we witness the patriotic hysteria in Moscow, and the new recruits marching off to war. Yevgraf Zhivago is sent by Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the first incarnation of what later became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to join the Imperial Russian Army for purposes of subverting the troops at the front. Pasha, who has joined the army because of his idealism and his dissolving marriage with Lara, is reported missing in action following a foolhardy frontal attack on the German lines. Lara enlists as a nurse in order to search for Pasha. Yuri Zhivago is drafted and becomes an army doctor. Following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the February Revolution, revolutionary fervor spreads to the front-line troops, who have been ill-led, half-clothed, and without enough weapons. When a group of newly arrived troops meet a mass of military deserters from the front, the Russian officers are killed, and doctor Zhivago enlists Lara's help to tend to the wounded. Together they run a field hospital in a former country estate for six months, during which time radical changes convulse Russia, as Vladimir Lenin arrives in Moscow and stages the October Revolution in Petrograd (not shown in the film), then the capital of Imperial Russia. During this time at the field hospital, Zhivago and Lara are in daily contact, and fall in love.

After the war, Yuri returns to his wife Tonya, son Sasha, and his father-in-law, Alexander, whose house in Moscow has been divided into flats by the new Soviet government. Zhivago, not knowing the political situation, is watched by the leader of the local Soviet committee. As a physician, Zhivago knows that there is an epidemic of typhus in the city, which is officially denied; his first experience of the new government's deception or cover-up. His half-brother Yevgraf, who is now a CHEKA officer, in one of many coincidences throughout the film, sees Zhivago scavenging wood, follows him to Alexander's apartment, dismisses the hovering local Soviet committee persons with a snap of his fingers, and reveals his identity as half-brother to Zhivago. He informs him that his poems are "not liked" by certain powerful persons, as being petty bourgeois and "personal." Zhivago, naive about the new political order, asserts to Yevgraf that "he cannot approve today what the (Communist) party may do tomorrow." Hearing those sentiments, Yevgraf realizes that Zhivago will soon be arrested as politically unreliable, so he arranges for passes and documents in order for Yuri and his family to escape from the new political capital of Moscow to the far away Gromeko country estate at Varykino, west of the Ural Mountains.

In contrast to Tonya's earlier arrival on a comfortable train from Paris, Zhivago, Tonya, Sasha and Alexander now board a train of boxcars in which crude bunk beds have been built, at which time they are informed that they'll be travelling through contested territory (during the Russian Civil War), which is being secured by a famous Bolshevik commander named Strelnikov (Russian for "The Shooter"), who steams up and down the Trans-Siberian Railway line in an armoured train. It is at this point that we meet Kostoyed (Klaus Kinski), an anarchist intellectual being sent to Siberia in chains. The journey in the boxcar filled with fifty people seems to the Zhivago family to be interminable, with only Yuri and Yuri's son seeing it as an adventure. While the train is stopped on a siding, Zhivago wanders away, and stumbles across the armoured train of Strelnikov, stopped at a siding in the forest. Zhivago is taken as a prisoner to Strelnikov and recognizes him as the former Pasha Antipov. Zhivago is first suspected as a White Russian agent sent to assassinate Strelnikov. Zhivago is subjected to an interrogation during which Strelnikov asserts that "the personal life is dead in Russia; history has killed it" and Zhivago answers that "I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it." The tension level drops. After determining that he and Zhivago have met before, and that Zhivago is a famous published poet, Strelnikov informs Yuri that Lara is living in the town of Yuriatin — very close to where Yuri will be living.

The Zhivago family arrives at Varykino, which has a large mansion and a small outbuilding. Since there is a notice that the mansion is the property of the state, they live in the outbuilding. They grow their own food and lead lives much as the Russian serfs had in the past. In the spring, Zhivago's thoughts turns toward Lara, whom he knows is living close-by. Zhivago finds Lara in nearby Yuriatin. They surrender to their long repressed feelings, beginning an affair, and a blissful time for them both. But when Tonya becomes pregnant, Zhivago swears he will break off with Lara, only to be conscripted that day into service by Communist partisans. After two years as a military doctor with the forces fighting the White Russian rebels, Zhivago at last deserts, struggling through deep snow, almost dying, to Yuriatin, and Lara. After six happy months, Lara reveals a letter from Tonya, in which she tells Yuri that she, her father, and Sasha have been deported, and had met with Lara while searching for Yuri.

During a fierce storm one night, Komarovsky arrives and informs them that they are being watched by the CHEKA due to Lara's marriage to Strelnikov and Yuri's "counter-revolutionary" poetry and desertion. Komarovsky offers Yuri and Lara his help in leaving Soviet Russia, but they refuse. Instead, they go to the isolated Varykino estate, which during the winter has turned into a kind of frosted ice-palace. To the sound of wolves howling in the nearby forest, Yuri begins writing the "Lara" poems, which will later make him famous but incur government displeasure. The wolves are a premonition; Komarovsky reappears again and tells Yuri that Strelnikov tried to reach Lara, was detained by authorities, and shot himself while being taken to his execution; Lara is in immediate danger, as the CHEKA had only left her free to lure Strelnikov into the open. Zhivago sends Lara away with Komarovsky, who has used his influence within the Communist Party to be appointed Minister of Justice of the Far Eastern Republic, a Soviet puppet state in Siberia. Refusing to leave with a man he despises, Yuri remains behind.

Years later in Moscow, during the Stalinist era, Yuri sees Lara while travelling on a tram, a mirroring of the tram scene in which he first sees Lara. Forcing his way off the tram, he runs after her, at which point he suffers a fatal heart attack. Yuri's funeral is well attended, as his poetry is already being published openly due to shifts in politics. Lara informs Yevgraf that she had given birth to Yuri's daughter, but lost her in the collapse of the White-controlled government in Mongolia. After vainly looking over hundreds of orphans with Yevgraf's help, Lara disappears during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, and "died or vanished somewhere, in one of the labour camps," according to Yevgraf.

While Yevgraf strongly believes that Tonya Komarovskaya is Yuri's and Lara's daughter, she is still not convinced. Yevgraf notices that Tonya carries with her a balalaika. He recalls that Yuri's mother left him one after her death. Finding that Tanya learned to play the balalaika by herself, he smiles, "Ah, then, it's a gift," thereby implying that she truly must be their daughter after all.

Reception
The film was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.

Despite being a spectacular box office hit, Doctor Zhivago received mixed reviews at the time of its release. It was criticised for its length and overly romantic depiction of the affair between Zhivago and Lara. Film critic Roger Ebert, while liking the film, said of Doctor Zhivago that "it lumbers noisily from nowhere to nowhere", and that Omar Sharif's performance was "soulful but bewildered". In general, the film's critics have found Doctor Zhivago too overly romantic and almost at the level of soap opera, with the (in their view) syrupy Lara's Theme at the top of their complaints. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said that Zhivago and Lara are "possessed by a strange passivity".  Sometimes those same critics who found the length of the film overbearing also found the depiction of historical events too facile. On the plus side, most critics acknowledge that film addresses such grand themes as a dramatic period in world history, the ascendance of life over death, the struggle of the individual against the state, the triumph of the heart over the mind, and the way good intentions can go terribly wrong. One of the strongest points of Doctor Zhivago is the startling visuals, with Bosley Crowther calling the photography "brilliant, tasteful, and exquisite as any ever put on the screen. Rod Steiger's role as Victor Komarovski is a memorable acting tour de force. Though the film takes the viewpoint of the dreamy poet Zhivago, the doctor side of Zhivago is rarely in evidence. In the end, Doctor Zhivago probably attempts too much; it is at heart a love story with a political background, and those who want a really deep view of the politics of the period will have to look elsewhere.

The film left an indelible mark on popular culture and fashion, and to this day remains an extremely popular film: Maurice Jarre's score—particularly "Lara's Theme"—became one of the most famous in cinematic history. Over the years, the film's critical reputation has gained in stature, and today Doctor Zhivago is considered to be one of Lean's finest works and is highly critically acclaimed, along with Lawrence of Arabia, Brief Encounter, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and A Passage to India.

As with the novel itself, the film was banned in the Soviet Union. It was not shown in Russia until 1994.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 85% 'Fresh' rating.

American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #39
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions - #7
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores - Nominated[7]
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - Nominated[8]
AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Epic Film[9]

Awards
The film won five Academy Awards and was nominated for five more:

Won
Best Art Direction (John Box, Terence Marsh, Dario Simoni)
Best Cinematography (Freddie Young)
Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Bolt)
Best Costume Design
Best Original Score

Nominated
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor (Tom Courtenay)
Best Director (David Lean)
Best Editing
Best Sound (A. W. Watkins, Franklin Milton)

The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, and won in every category. It is tied with Love Story, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and A Star Is Born for the most wins by a film

Won
Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
Golden Globe Award for Best Director - Motion Picture (David Lean)
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama (Omar Sharif)
Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay (Robert Bolt)
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre)