If you watch only one historical romance set during the Russian Revolution
... well, unless you've got A LOT of time on your hands, it's going to have to
be only one, because "Reds" is a little over three hours and this 1965
epic, based on the Boris Pasternak ... more novel and directed by "Lawrence of Arabia"
maestro David Lean is ... a little over three hours. Whew. Omar Sharif plays the
title doctor, the only sane and compassionate man in a world gone mad, it
sometimes seems, and Julie Christie, as beautiful as she ever looked in
a film, is Lara, his impossible love. The sweep is majestic, so much so it's
intimidating. But the love story is the movie's beating heart, and with Lean's
majestic images and Maurice Jarre's lush score stoking it throughout, that heart
maintains an engrossing beat.
