Translated material
Parallel worlds
The self-will of the screenwriter, forcing the characters to bear a complete gag from the point of view of the canonical text and inventing a good third for the author, while throwing away half of the characters that are fundamentally important for the compositional intrigue and turning episodic heroes almost into the center (a striking example: theosophist Shura Shlesinger, who became the embodiment of the entire eccentric Silver Age and ending his life in Soviet dungeons), getting rid of key scenes, changing the chronology and even the seasons (why does Zhivago die in the cold winter instead of the hot end of August?) - this self-will is burdensome. Despite the unconditional professional talents of Arabov, Alexander Sokurov’s constant co-author.
In addition, the actors (special thanks for the casting - the duet of Oleg Yankovsky - Komarovsky and Chulpan Khamatova - Lara should enter the annals of modern Russian cinema!) feel natural within the genre framework given to them, they sincerely and diligently play out a good retro melodrama - excellent, not at all “soapy” literary quality, with a good “picture”, with ambitions for historiosophy almost satisfied during the filming process. But precisely melodrama, which Pasternak’s book is in no way. And from a radical misunderstanding of this comes such a fundamentally and consciously free handling of material that is sacred in nature.
In the novel "Doctor Zhivago" there are a lot of deliberate plot effects - unexpected meetings (and non-meetings!) of heroes, their unique ability, without saying a word, to be in the same place at the same time, constant discoveries (the lawyer from the first part who killed Zhivago’s father is the same Komarovsky; the front-line linen worker Tanya, who is absent from the film from the epilogue, is the lost daughter of Lara and Yuri, etc.), endless interweaving of destinies. It’s even strange that Arabov and Proshkin did not develop this seemingly quite “serial” adventurous potential! But they were clearly inspired by him, believing that Pasternak wrote a traditional family saga, a “great Russian novel.”
However, he wrote a philosophical, even theological treatise about man in History and Nature. And in it, even intricately far-fetched intrigues and twists and turns, supposedly random coincidences and family secrets were supposed to testify to the connectedness of everyone with everyone, to the inclusion of everyone in a single flow of life. A flow that cannot be interrupted. “There will be no death” - this quote from John the Theologian was supposed to be the title of the book, but it turned into its refrain.
“There is no death. Death is not our thing,” Zhivago assures the dying mother of his future wife. In the book he assures at length, at length, as if giving a lecture from a seminary department. In the film, Menshikov slams a glass, then another - and, cheerful, goes to his deathbed. In this situation, “There is no death” is equivalent to “The drunken sea is knee-deep.” Philosophical details from Zhivago's monologue are omitted.
How the key character is missed - the philosopher, the defrocked priest, Yura's uncle Nikolai Vedenyapin, who constantly talks about the Christian understanding of history as a response to death.
The authors of the series are afraid of Pasternak's philosophy, bypass it, hiding in the redoubts of fiction and museum recreations of the era - parties, restaurants, family holidays, street decorations of the beginning of the century. After another truncated theological tirade, Zhivago-Menshikov suddenly grins obscenely, waves his hand and says: “Come on, this is all an operetta!” The move is unthinkable in the logic of Pasternak, who wrote his “uncomplicated story” as a sincere, almost evangelical message to the city and the world.
A message in which the external - dynamic and dramatic, but too “this-worldly” - plot was only an excuse for expressing cosmic power. The filmmakers did an excellent job with the “this-worldliness”; they neglected the metaphysical dimension. It is no coincidence that numerous scenes of funerals completely disappeared in the series - of Zhivago’s mother, the mother of his fiancee, of himself. It is clear that the coffin is not very cinematic, but for Pasternak, farewell to the deceased meant evidence of Eternal Life - in history, in memory, in a world developing according to its general transpersonal laws. In Christ.
Meanwhile, the film is not spiritualistic, but physiological. Lara and Komarovsky are squeezing and fussing on the floor. With the rapacity of a male, Patul Antipov pounces on his wife on their wedding night. Zhivago is constantly operating - the camera conveys the details of the process with the details of a video manual for the pathologist. Moreover, Yuri Aleksandrovich, wounded at the front, practically operates on himself, directing the actions of his colleagues from the surgical table - a senseless and bloodthirsty scene.
“What a tough movie!” - my mother sighed at the moment of Shura Shlesinger’s torture in the OGPU, also conjectured by the authors. The film is heavy and ponderous, but Pasternak’s text, difficult to read and understand, is light and light. It is full of “happy, tender calm,” as it is written in its final lines. This is the calmness of knowledge, confidence in the immutability of death and the naturalness of overcoming it, the calmness of life in history and nature, the calmness of belonging to other worlds.
Proshkin’s series unfolds in this world. Cinema is too earthly an activity.