Doctor Zhivago

Somewhere (my love), someone is surely humming Maurice Jarre's haunting theme to David Lean's Oscar-winning epic Doctor Zhivago, based on Boris Pasternak's Soviet-banned saga of love and revolution. This immaculate two-disc DVD does full justice to Lean's sweeping historical soap opera, which does for the Russian Revolution what Gone With the Wind did for the Civil War. Here, the Scarlett/Rhett/Ashley triangle is comprised of doctor and poet Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif, never more dashing), his bedrock wife Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) and passionate nurse Lara (a ravishing Julie Christie). The distinguished supporting cast includes Rod Steiger as the scoundrel lawyer Komarovsky, and Tom Courtenay as the idealistic revolutionary Pasha, whom Lara will marry. Earning Academy Awards for its screenplay, cinematography, art and set direction, costumes, and music score, this definitive edition's widescreen presentation (for years the film was only available in a pan-and-scan version) preserves Lean's meticulous compositions, from the breathtaking snowy vistas to the thundering battle scenes. Somewhat overstuffed with repetitive supplemental features (only the most star-crossed fan will be able to make it through the 10 "vintage documentaries" produced to hype the film's release--although Geraldine Chaplin's screen test is a nifty archival find), the second disc's best is the 30th anniversary retrospective "Doctor Zhivago: The Making of a Russian Epic." Highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)