Colby Cosh, watching the new Doctor Zhivago mini, admits, “I have zero familiarity with the book or the legendary film”. Well, I have some familiarity with the book, having read it at the age of 15 or 16 and taken it nearly as a revelation, only to get a cold awakening later. (Nabokov called it a falsch novel, right?) I have zero familiarity with the original movie, oo, but it’s enough for me to know that it starred Omar Sharif, an ultra-handsome Arab macho as Zhivago, snub-nosed, high-cheekboned and brown-haired, and uncomfortable with his looks. According to a Russian source, Omar Sharif didn’t make a slightest attempt to play Yuri Zhivago.
Anyway, the book may be good or bad, but it’s a piece of serious writing that doesn’t easily lend itself to adaptations for entertainment purposes. That’s why…