THE ENDURING POWER OF CLASSICS

One of the simple pleasures of life is not to have the alarm clock tell you what time you need to be up to go to the office. That means I am the mistress of my time and don't have to go to bed or wake up at a set hour unless I choose to do so for personal reasons.

It was one of those late evenings when the summer sun is still shining brightly and I said it would be a waste to hit the sack and miss all the warmth.

And so I decided to watch Dr Zhivago, a classic.

When we think of classics we think of books, music, consumer artifacts and works of art. In fact Dr Zhivago a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy was a best seller during those days. It was also regarded as a love story of all times.

As I enjoy history and culture, moments of past grandeur and human struggles carefully crafted into a movie are simply mesmerising.

The last time I watched Dr Zhivago was when I was 6. My mother brought me to Odeon cinema and it was always a treat to go to the cinema. It didn’t matter what the movie was. I was forewarned that it was going to be a long movie but I was undeterred because I was actually looking forward to the intermission where cinema stewards would come in and peddle their ware. These stewards had trays dangling from their necks laden with fruit and snacks . We bought the snacks but never the fruit because my mother didn’t trust the stewards to wash the cut fruit carefully and she had convinced herself that flies would have landed on the fruit .

All I could remember of Dr Zhivago were 3 scenes: the opening scene when young Yuri (Tarek Shariff) walked in his mother's funeral procession; a pregnant Tonya, Yuri's wife (Geraldine Chaplin) ironing with a heavy vintage iron that was fed with hot coals and Yuri (Omar Shariff) collapsing on the road.

I heard that grown men cry while watching the movie so I had a ready box of tissues beside me. |I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared.

I kept a lookout for those scenes just to make sure I wasn't imagining them. It was interesting that the 3 scenes were at the beginning, the middle (at 140mins of the run of the film) and at the end of the movie. I wondered why I could still remember those scenes. I must have slept through the rest of the film.

So watching the same movie so many years later evoked a whole gamut of different feelings. Many things were no longer black and white considering the abnormal circumstances that surrounded the protagonists, like political change and war. The hard core villain was a tragic hero, the dreamer had inner strength and the stoic was too stubborn to a fault. Before long I felt tears welling up and I had become non-judgemental.

When we survive different working environments and have lived in different societies and different countries and are open to correction and change, then we become fully fleshed out,. This is what E.M. Forster would refer to as round characters in works of fiction. A round character encounters conflict and evolves unlike flat, or static, characters.

We become kinder, more forgiving and more accommodating. Although we may not agree with the character traits nor the deeds, we are not so quick to impose our standards and convictions on others.

We wonder if we were in that very same position, would we have not done the same?

Maybe we have seen loved ones entrapped in similar situations. Maybe we have recognised and accepted the fact that there are so many cross cultural and cross generational differences that we learn not to be upset by what we cannot change.

Having said that, age is not the determinant in this metamorphosis because many despite being older have remained flat characters. They continue to put labels on everything with no compassion or understanding in between. They want others to be like them, to think the way they do. As long as that remains unresolved, the conflict stays and they continue to be tormented within.

By the time I finished watching the movie, it was into the wee hours of the morning. I went to bed feeling very accomplished having survived the marathon - all 3 hours and 20 minutes of it - although it was a pretty easy marathon with no effort on my part except to lie on the couch and watch another world set in another time.

And I found myself inadvertently humming Lara’s theme in my dreams. 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES MALAYSIA ON 6 May 2018 www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/05/366328/endearing-power-classics