The 1965 film, Dr Zhivago, is a beautiful 'love in a time of war' epic set against the politically volatile backdrop of the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War. Yuri Zhivago is wonderfully beguiling; a poetic and 'high-minded' doctor who falls deeply in love with the young beauty, Lara. The film explores the mindless futility of conflict and the far-reaching spectrum encompassing the intensified human experiences and emotions during war.
The Varykino ice palace is truly enchanting. It seems to stand still in time, immortalising and perhaps forever holding within its frozen walls the precious love that Zhivago and Lara could only share for a fleeting moment in time...
As the novel, written by Boris Pasternak, was prohibited in the Soviet Union, much of the film had to be filmed in Spain, with other scenes also filmed in the snow playgrounds of Canada and Finland.
'God rot good men.'
