Doctor Zhivago (film) - Plot

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.

When Yuri Zhivago is orphaned after his mother's death, 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. Years later, Zhivago, a medical student by training, and a poet in heart, meets Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) again when she returns as a young lady from Paris to Moscow.

Lara, meanwhile, engaged to the idealistic Pavel Pavlovich ("Pasha") Antipov (Tom Courtenay), is seduced by Victor Ipolitovich Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), a friend of her mother's (Adrienne Corri). Pasha drifts into left-wing extremism after being wounded by sabre-wielding Dragoons during a peaceful protest. Pasha goes to Lara to treat his wound and asks her to hide a gun he picked up at the demonstration.

Lara's mother discovers her affair with Komarovsky and attempts suicide. Komarovsky summons help and Zhivago arrives as the physician's assistant. When Komarovsky 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 at a Christmas Eve party, wounding him. Komarovsky insists that no action be taken against Lara, who is escorted out by Pasha. Yuri attends to Komarovsky's wound. Although enraged and devastated by Lara's infidelity, Pasha still marries Lara, and they have a daughter, Katya.

During World War I, Yevgraf Zhivago is sent by Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to subvert the Imperial Russian Army for the Bolsheviks. Pasha is missing in action following a daring charge attack on German forces. Lara enlists as a nurse in order to search for him. Yuri becomes a battlefield doctor. When the February Revolution breaks, Zhivago enlists Lara's help to tend to the wounded, and together they run a field hospital in a dacha for six months, during which time radical changes ensue throughout Russia, as the October Revolution breaks out and Vladimir Lenin arrives in Moscow.

After the war, Yuri returns to his wife Tonya, son Sasha, and father-in-law, whose house in Moscow has been divided into tenements by the new Soviet government. His half-brother Yevgraf, who is now working for the CHEKA, finds him, and informs him that his poems have been condemned by Soviet censors as antagonistic to Communism. Yevgraf helps arrange for rail passes for Yuri and his family to escape to the Gromeko estate at Varykino, in the Ural Mountains.

Zhivago, Tonya, Sasha and Alexander board a heavily-guarded cattle train, during which time they are informed that they'll be traveling in the midst of contested territory being secured by a Bolshevik commander named Strelnikov. On the way, while the train is stopped, Zhivago wanders away from the train, and stumbles across the armored train of Strelnikov himself, sitting on a hidden siding. Yuri recognizes Strelnikov as Pasha Antipov. After a tense interview, Strelnikov informs Yuri that Lara is living with her daughter Katya in the town of Yuriatin — which is then occupied by the anti-Communist White Army. He allows Zhivago to return to his family, although it is hinted by a guard that most people interrogated by Strelnikov end up being shot.

The family lives a peaceful life at Varykino, until Zhivago finds Lara in the nearby Yuriatin. They surrender to their long repressed feelings, beginning an extra-marital affair. When Tonya is pregnant, Zhivago breaks off with Lara, only to be abducted and conscripted into service by Communist partisans. After two years, Zhivago deserts, trudging through the snow to Yuriatin. Lara reveals a letter from Tonya, in which she tells Yuri that she, her father, and Sasha have emigrated to Paris, and had met with Lara while searching for the long-lost Yuri. She writes, partly, "I must honestly admit that {Lara} Antipova is a good person." Zhivago decides to stay with Lara.

Komarovsky arrives one night and informs them that they are being watched by the CHEKA, due to Lara's marriage to Commissar Strelnikov (who has at this point fallen out of favor with the Soviets) and Yuri's "counter-revolutionary" poetry and desertion. Komarovsky offers Yuri and Lara his help in leaving Russia, but they refuse. Instead, they go to the desolate Varykino estate. Yuri begins writing the "Lara" poems, which will later make him famous but incur governmental displeasure. Komarovsky reappears and tells Yuri that Strelnikov committed suicide while being taken to his execution. Therefore, Lara is in immediate danger, as the CHEKA had apparently only left her free to lure Strelnikov into the open. Zhivago agrees to send Lara away with Komarovsky, who has become an official in the Far East. Refusing to leave with a man he despises, Yuri remains behind.

Years later, during the Stalinist era, Yuri sees Lara while traveling on a tram. 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 has 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 Tanya Komarovskaya is Yuri's and Lara's daughter, she is still not convinced. Yevgraf notices that Tanya 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.