Dr. Zhivago (1965)

Dr. Zhivago falls into the "epic" category.  It's long--about three hours--, and it takes place during World War I.  I wasn't sure what to expect from this story.  I knew it was a love story, and I knew it took place during Bolshevik Russia, but beyond that, I had no idea.  I knew it was one of my mom's favorite movies.

It was nominated for Best Picture that year but lost to The Sound of Music.

I didn't like it.

Okay, I didn't entirely not like it.  Just overall.

Before I get into what I didn't like about it, let me give you a brief synopsis.  The story follows a young woman, Lara, who is raped by her uncle (by marriage) and then drawn into a weird incestual relationship with him.  She was engaged to be married to a young man named Pasha, who was working with the Bolsheviks for revolution.  She finally breaks ties with her uncle by shooting him and wounding him and marries Pasha.  In the meantime, Dr. Yuri Zhivago, who was orphaned at a young age, meets Lara and feels pity for her situation.  Later, they end up working in a hospital together, and Lara desires that Yuri not have to lie to his wife about their relationship, and she maintains a purity in their relationship, though it is obvious that Yuri longs for her.

Moscow becomes dangerous, and Yuri moves his father-in-law, wife, and son out to the country.  Yuri finds out that Lara lives in the nearest town, Yuriatin.  He meets her at the library, and their affair begins.  For some reason, Lara's scruples have disappeared.  Yuri continues meeting with her.  His wife, Tonya, is pregnant with his second child (his first was a son, Sasha), yet he goes to Yuriatin to see Lara anyway.  On the way, he is taken captive by the Reds and forced to be their medic.  He eventually breaks free and returns home.  He finds Lara and his belongings, but his family is gone.  He doesn't try to repair things with his wife or reunite with his children.  Instead, he lives with Lara and her daughter, Katya, until the political situation forces him to send them away to safety.

And now for my rant...

I am sick to death of films where people cheat on their spouses in the name of "true love."  It's annoying.  This film, which was quite racy for 1965 (especially standing next to The Sound of Music in Oscar nominations!), follows the age-old deception, "If it feels good, do it."  Never mind who you hurt in the process as long as YOU'RE happy.  And, we, as an audience, are supposed to applaud and hope that Yuri and Lara will be together--because they are in love.

Forget Yuri's wife.

Forget his children.

Forget that he abandoned them to go meet his mistress.

Forget Lara's husband, even if he was a crazy.

Forget her daughter.

And I'm supposed to fall into line and say, "Yuri and Lara forever!!!"

What kind of man abandons his family?

Not one that I will cheer for, most definitely.

What kind of woman cheats on her husband--the one she made vows to?

Not a woman I want to be like.

One of the interesting themes of the movie that Dave pointed out was that the Reds were stealing people's private lives--forcing communism, requiring that all people share everything.  And yet, Yuri, this poet with "subversive lines," retains his private affair with Lara and lives a secret life.  One man who was chained on the train to Yuriatin told the others in the boxcar that he was freer than all of them because the Reds couldn't take away his thoughts.  It's true--you can be forced to live a certain way outwardly, but no one dictates your inner life.

I'm just sad that Yuri and Lara chose to please themselves rather than serving their families.  Their sin robbed them of true freedom and left them alone in the end.  Many liked this film for the "love story" element.  If the message was about true freedom, I think Yuri and Lara are sad and miserable people, enslaved to their own desires and not free at all.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Lawrence of Arabia is epic--an epic, to be exact.  Epics in film are easy to pick out--they're LONG, they have a classic score, and the story is often about a heroic person who changes history.  Epics often occur in a war-setting and emphasize the importance one life can make in the world.  Lawrence of Arabia fits this description entirely.

When looking at the film's epic qualities, I had to agree that the score was incredible.  I recognized it quickly because it is often played at the Oscars.  Cinematically, the wide screenshots were beautiful; they really captured the beauty and expanse of the desert.  The eye makeup was very Adam Lambert.  Peter O'Toole (who played Lawrence) was a splendid and believable character.

The story is perhaps the strongest epic quality of the film.  It is the tale of T. E. Lawrence, a British military officer, engaged in Arabian conflicts during World War 1.  This is a true story, and of course, that makes it all the more important.  Lawrence helped unite warring Arab tribes to defeat the Turks and take over Aqaba and then Damascus.  He was a successful leader, I believe, because he gave up his identity to become Arab--he wore their clothes, rode their camels, survived the deserts, and ate their food.  And it is this that makes this movie worthwhile, in my opinion.

I love the fact that Lawrence gave up his English persona to help these Arabs.  Of course, originally, his goal was to help further the British Empire (I think...), but he ended up really loving these people.  At one point, when he had enough of death, he wanted to get as far away from the desert and its nomads as possible.  However, as he was leaving, you see him looking longingly at the Arabs traveling along the road.  It was as if he was leaving behind a part of himself.

The reason his identifying with the Arabs is so beautiful to me is that it reminds me of Jesus and the way that he left Heaven to come to Earth and be a man.  He laid aside His outer glory and took on a perishable body in order to heal our brokenness and bring us peace.  Lawrence stepped out of his comfortable position as an English soldier and found himself identifying with these warring Arab tribes.  He united them and brought peace--in a similar manner as Christ.

We learn at the beginning of the movie that he dies in a motorcycle wreck, and many memorialize him.  Some talk about what a hero he was while others only remember his eccentric and showboating personality.  I just found it incredibly ironic that a man who survived the Sinai Desert, sandstorms, avoided quicksand, and managed to live through wars, ends up dying in a motorcycle wreck.  He was definitely more than a showboat riding camels and wearing Arabian clothes, he was a world-changer.  That's pretty epic.

Next up: The Sound of Music

From Here to Eternity (1953)

This is the scene--the one everyone remembers--the one that advertises the movie.

But the scene was so brief, and honestly, it didn't live up to the hype, in my book.  But, sex sells, so there you have it.

From Here to Eternity is a film about army life in Hawaii just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It was based upon a very controversial novel by James Jones.  It was controversial because of the alarming homosexual content and use of expletives.  The screenplay obviously cut out both, although there was one scene where I had questioned the sexual orientation of one character.  I also later read that Montgomery Clift was a homosexual and was tortured by his guilt (though he wasn't the character I held in question).

The setting of the story is a slow, uneventful, and a seemingly perfect and peaceful time in a Hawaiian paradise.  I say "seemingly" because it was anything but perfect and peaceful for the characters of this film.  Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is continually punished for refusing to box for his company's boxing team.  Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr) is the wife of Captain Dana Holmes (Phillip Ober), a continually and unashamed unfaithful husband.  Then there's Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra), Prewitt's "buddy-boy" (an oft used nickname in this movie--borderline annoying), who is both bothered and harassed by the stockade Sgt. Judson aka "Fatso."  Though he wasn't particularly troubled, Sgt. Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) was bored out of his mind--a slave to a desk job with no challenges in life...until he meets Cpt. Holmes' wife, Karen.  And finally, Alma 'Lorene' Burke (Donna Reed), a gentlemen's companion at the "New Congress Club," is trying to make enough money to go home and show her hometown (and specifically an ex-boyfriend who left her for someone with money and position) that she, too, can be a proper woman with rank and fortune.

I love the way this movie was filmed--until this point, I haven't really seen a film track the stories of so many different characters with such depth.  I find it difficult to point to a leading man or lady in the film because each character's story was important and not secondary to another.  Lancaster and Kerr got top billing for the film, but Clift and Reed and Sinatra had stories just as compelling.  The romantic stories were layered so that you could compare and contrast the relationships of Warden and Holmes and Prewitt and Burke.  Sinatra's story was both for comic relief and to add depth to Prewitt's story.

Many of the characters ended up in the Hawaiian paradise in hopes of a new beginning.  But, like Adam and Eve, a paradisical location doesn't ensure eternal bliss.  These tortured souls duke it out in their carnal humanity, and every single one of them comes up empty-handed.  This film is all about human frailty, struggle, desire, a lack of fulfillment, and emptiness.  They realize that they don't have control over their destinies because of the choices that others make in their lives.  The conclusion with Pearl Harbor's bombing was like nails in their coffins--two men dead, one man left fighting, one man dismissed, and two women, on a boat, questioning if fate would allow them to return.

As I pondered the title, From Here to Eternity, I struggled with the meaning.  When I put this all together in my untrained film brain, I can only surmise that both the novel and the film are trying to communicate that our perception of bliss and pursuit of it are pointless.  It is the choices we make that determine our course.  These characters would continue living their lives as they were in the pseudo-Edenic existence, but their choices made their lives a warzone even before the Japanese started bombing.  Their lives were disintegrating before war came to them--"eternity" was suddenly out of their grasps.  This is the human story:

Paradise lost.

Next up: Lawrence of Arabia (Ben Hur was next on the list, but Netflix is saying it is unavailable.  We'll pick it up whenever they get it!)