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The idea is to ‘de-westernise’ one of only three Russian novels to have won a Nobel Prize for literature and give a contemporary Russian audience an authentic take on a book that was banned by the Communist authorities until the late 1980s. The ‘original’ big budget American film defined for many in the West what Russia was all about: snow, romantic sleigh rides, rolling landscapes, feel-good folk music, and revolution. But 40 years later the Russians argue that legendary director David Lean got some, if not all of it, badly wrong. Though the Russians are gracious about the famous English-directed US-financed film that won five Oscars, they are adamant that it was a peculiarly Western version of a quintessentially Russian work of literature. In the Hollywood film, made more than 40 years ago, Omar Sharif plays the protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a doctor and poet from a wealthy Siberian family, who strives to find love against the brutal backdrop of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil war between the Reds and the Whites. The star-studded cast included Julie Christie as Lara, one of his two romantic interests, as well as Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness and Ralph Richardson. Its haunting Tchaikovsky-inspired Maurice Jarre soundtrack and particularly the recurring "Lara’s Theme" stuck in the mind of a generation—at least in the West—and the film, which runs for over three hours, was acclaimed as one of David Lean’s best. But for Aleksander Proshkin, director of the first Russian Doctor Zhivago film, many details in the Hollywood movie were just plain wrong. In an interview with The Independent he rattled off a long list of inaccuracies and cultural misconceptions and argued that an "authentic" Russian version was sorely needed. "It is a wonderful US film that belongs to its time," he said of the David Lean version. "But it is American. It does not portray the reality of Russia. It is Russia through Anglo-Saxon eyes. In fact it’s neither Russia not Pasternak." Proshkin pointed out for example that the repeated use of a balalaika, a Russian peasant instrument, in the film’s soundtrack was incongruous, bearing in mind that the Zhivagos were from the upper echelons of society and were millionaires. "It (the balalaika) has no place in the lives of wealthy millionaires. It’s as if we made a film about Asia and had a president playing a banjo. It would be wrong. In Doctor Zhivago it was just a device to make the film more accessible." Nor, he argues, do Siberian farmhouses boast elaborate onion-domed cupolas as they do in the Hollywood film. But what is really missing, he argues, is an authentic portrayal of the Russian soul or state of mind. "It’s like when our actors play an American or an Englishman. There are certain things that just can’t be captured." Ironically he notes that the character of Lara was not the classic Russian heroine that Hollywood made her out to be but of French and Belgian parents, a fact that made her ‘freer’ and ‘different’. Proshkin is careful not to be rude about the Hollywood film and quick to say that it was made at a time when the Cold War was raging and Russia was all but closed for foreigners. Hence it was filmed in Spain and Finland rather than in Moscow and Siberia. But he criticises the Hollywood approach of making everything ‘black and white’ and of dividing the novel’s characters into good and bad. He argues that Pasternak’s characters are more richly textured and complex. The scale and budget of the Russian production, which stars Oleg Menshikov, one of Russia’s most popular actors, is not comparable to Hollywood but Proshkin definitely feels he has created a more faithful Doctor Zhivago. "This is a key novel when it comes to understanding Russia," he says. "Along with Quiet Flows the Don and the Gulag Archipelago it is one of just three Russian novels that has won the Nobel Prize. It is not the best or most perfect of novels but all of Russia is in it." — By arrangement with The Independent |
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