Following 'Lawrence of Arabia' (1962), director David Lean continued his epic phase with this adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel. During World War One, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) studies to become a doctor in Moscow. He marries his childhood sweetheart Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), but is attracted to dressmaker's daughter Lara (Julie Christie), herself engaged to young revolutionary Pasha (Tom Courtenay). Lara is also conducting an affair with government official Komarovsky (Rod Steiger). Yuri and Lara's paths cross again in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, and the two begin a passionate affair.

Three people, hitherto unknown to one another, are exceptionally sensitised, partly as the result of neurological changes following a missile strike, to global cruelty and suffering. Their attempts to alert society to much that is unrecognised are met with incomprehension and hostility. They are eventually exiled as threats to society whilst they defend their "compassionate pessimism" against political, commercial, educational and religious opinion. They conclude that the "developed world" is still stone-aged beneath its civilised veneer. This disturbing novel touches upon some of the author's own concerns, for world peace, respect for animal life, and for the arts, music especially. But basically this is a love story about the growth in relationship between a group of idealists, and their attempts to evade forces of oppression as they are watched, warned and eventually thrown out of their native land.