“People Will Do Anything”—Dr. Zhivago and the Human Condition
Carlo Ponti’s epic classic Dr. Zhivago premiered in the United States sixty years ago this month. For many, it is a love story about a doctor-poet and “his” Lara. It’s more: it’s a study of the soul of man.
From the very beginning, the film warns that human life is not neat or sentimental. In medical school, the young Zhivago peers at bacteria through a microscope. His professor, Kurt, admires their beauty but turns to Zhivago’s future: research, not general practice. Zhivago insists on being a GP; he wants to see life as it is, in all its messy reality. Kurt’s observation is prophetic: “Life, he wants to see life. Well, you’ll find that pretty creatures do ugly things to people.” Zhivago’s journey is to witness precisely that—ugliness masquerading as necessity, or even virtue.
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Professor Kurt is not a Calvinist but a realist, and his words are prophetic. Later, when Lara’s mother attempts suicide—having discovered her daughter displaced her in her “benefactor’s” affections and Komarovsky summons Kurt to save her—Kurt takes Zhivago along so the poet can “see a bit
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