Dr Zhivago

1. Splendor In The Grass: A Semiotic Outlook on Genious Anatolian Film Director Elia Kazan’s Dramatic Work of Art, M.Nurdan Oncel Taskiran, Assis.Prof. PhD, Internet - http://akademikpersonel.kocaeli.edu.tr/nurdan/bildiri/nurdan08.12.2010_19.03.09bildiri.pdf

A story, of any type, is greatly affected by the characters’ outlook on life. A bright, hopeful main character will give the narrative a more lighthearted feel, and cause the reader to feel encouraged and satisfied. If the character has a negative perspective, however, it can elicit sadness, pity, or even irritation from the reader. In Voltaire’s Candide and Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich, two characters with very different worldviews are displayed. The lighthearted Candide maintained an attitude of cheerfulness and perseverance even through the hardships of his life, which stems from his deep love and care for others, while the coldhearted despair of Ivan Ilyich is only intensified into anger by the feigned optimism of those around him.

Telling the story of Prince Obolensky’s life has merit. One assumes this is an outline for a feature script. The story is presented as a drama with a dramatic tone. The time period, setting, and era feel authentic.

All films, regardless of their intended purposes, tend to capture a piece of history and culture within them. Film’s ability to capture images and produce a visual is truly unique, as other methods of storytelling, such as writing a book, fail to truly encapsulate the human experience. Using an aesthetic lens, film directors essentially preserve time, and bring us back to our roots. Through masterful manipulation of the aesthetic properties of film, Milos Forman succeeds in illuminating the historical and cultural significance of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, making it worthy of placement in the National Film Archive.

Soviet Montage is a movement driven by “Marxist [politics]” and an “economic philosophy” developed in Soviet Russia at the time of revolution. Lenin himself considered film, as an art form as the “most influential of all arts” as it not only entertained but could be used to “[mould] and reinforce values.”( Mast, G. & Kawin, B. F.) Sergei Eisenstein, himself a Marxist, is no exception to this and not only are his films are full of political propaganda, but he is also considered “the greatest master of montage.” .”( Mast, G. & Kawin, B. F.) His film October, called Ten Days That Shook The World in the Western world at the time and butchered due to its content, has always been considered problematic for audiences and critics alike and the standard critique of the film soon became “The Film as a whole is difficult and incoherent.” (Sperbur) Although if analysed properly, you can see that it has powerful political and social messages to convey and comprises of film form that Eisenstein himself called “intellectual film.”

It becomes evident through Zosima’s life that living in this radical way of sobornost is possible, but only comes through an acceptance of an unconditional love and no amount of knowledge, understanding, or intellectuality. Zosima successfully delivers this message to his people, and in turn others also follow. For this extreme living does not exist for only the holy individuals, but for young monks like Alyosha, terrible women like Grushenka, and miserable sinners like Dimitri. While living in acceptance of the guilt one owes everyone appears unfair and irrational, Dostoevsky proves there is a way and that in the end it produces the most beautiful

The main character comes down with a deathly illness. At this moment he accepts his mortality also consequentially except everything that is wrong with him physically and metaphorically. ”Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible"(2.1). Although not only has he realized the terrible choices he has made but he is also coming to terms with the fact he must die knowing he made these choices. For Ivan there is no going back, he has no chance to fix or make up for the wrong doing he has done it's just over and he must painfully live with this agony and realize it until he takes his last breath that nothing can be

Coincidence plays a huge role in the story, as much of the major events in Zhivago’s life occur because of coincidence. Coincidence is the driving force that moves Zhivago and Lara’s relationship along, because despite Russia being a vast country, fate continues to bring them together. One example of this is when Yuri and Lara are randomly sent to work at the same hospital during World War I. Coincidence again plays in their favor when Yuri and Tonya travel to Varykino and Yuri just happens to see Lara at a library there. The fact that Zhivago carries with him, the image of Lara’s candle in the window, before he even knows Lara, hints that there is some greater plan at work for these characters. But Pasternak’s ultimate fate for these characters

The play, “The Red Count,” which features a play within a play where people of Russia in 2013 are preforming a play about Alexei Tolostoy, a 1930’s Russian playwright who was a favorite of Stalin, also features a number of female characters who play a crucial role in the plot. Among these important characters are Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, Anna Chekova, Anna Akhmatova, Alexei’s current wife, Ludo, and Alexei’s ex-wife, Julia. These women are often seen in an unfavorable light and treated poorly by their male counterparts, but the reader can admire their strength and independence. The complexity of this play leads to complex characters, and each of these women are unique and portrayed in a different light than the other women. In the 2013 play, Lyudmila is a strong-willed and sympathetic character and Anna is talented but used, while in the 1930’s play, Akhmatova is seen as disrespected and unreliable, Ludo is superficial and submissive, and Julia is bold and has a strong sense of self.

The novel parallels events and characters that had a great impact on the Russian Revolution. As well as the big part propaganda played in both roles as it contributes to how both Napoleon and Stalin were able to gain the amount of power they had. Overall, giving the general feel through the allegory that obtaining power over something or someone will lead to oppression and

The fictionalization of events, whether they were real events or entirely fabricated, was an inherent if not articulated component of both Eisenstein and Vertov’s theories of montage. The desire to find a socialist art form capable of expressing the truth according to socialism led both directors to express truth only from an ideological point of view. They not only inaccurately displayed historical events, but also assigned to them false emotions, ideological conclusions and outcomes. Whether it was the implied mass involvement in the Russian Revolution in October, the industrialization in The Man with a Movie Camera, the fictionalized relationship between Ivan and his subjects in Ivan the Terrible, or the deification of Lenin and the transference of immortality to Stalin in Three Songs of Lenin, the creation of meaning through montage necessarily led to the creation of false history as

That Rodya is convinced by this line of reasoning to the point of action suggests that he also is devoid of the deontological ethics that are associated with the traditional, Orthodox Russia. Rodya’s willingness to commit this heinous crime which ultimately destroys not only Alyona, but also Rodya himself and the innocent Lizaveta suggests that Dostoevsky's novel is a critique of the nihilistic utilitarianism of Rodya.

Doctor Zhivago is a historically accurate movie. It is a love story that takes place during the Russian Revolution, World War One, and the Russian Civil War. Doctor Zhivago is historically correct because of the events it represents, the people the actors portray, and the level of detail put into the setting.

Elena is a dense film; Zviaginstev uses it to highlight the ways in which lives and relationships are broken apart, both interpersonally and intrapersonally. The film is permeated by divisions: division between the family of Elena and the family of Vladimir, divisions between members of Elena’s family specifically, as well as societal and spiritual divides. These separations allow the viewer to understand the depth of disintegration the director is trying to communicate. Using both characters and cinematography, Zviaginstev uses Elena to comment on the way that modernity and post-Sovietism in Russia contribute to a continued loss of social and spiritual connections. By analyzing the various ways that the director explores and comments on these themes, Elena can be viewed and understood both in and out of its context. Outside the setting of Russia, this film can also be understood as a more general commentary on social and spiritual voids.

In this film, Bodrov takes on a huge challenge to captures a man’s rise to power and a large overview of Genghis Khan’s life in a two-hour film. Even though the movie is intense, it does not seem hurried and it has mythical add ins to give it a more “capturing” movie scene.