Doctor Zhivago

The film version of Doctor Zhivago grossed the equivalent of 2 billion dollars worldwide. 

The movie follows two star-crossed lovers, married to other people, tragically caught in a huge revolution that tosses them hither and yon.  

The ending is unusual. The two main characters are long dead. Zhivago's powerful half-brother, Yevgraf, visits a power plant deep in the USSR to determine if a young worker there, Tonya Komarov,  is his niece. She has no idea who he is or who her birth parents had been. He doesn't tell her. But he sees in her the artistic talent that runs through his family. The end.

Why is that so powerful? Here's what I think.

The USSR had been idealistically devoted to creating a new sort of human, adults dedicated to the state and humanity as whole. Not to family. The new kind of citizen was not to be  sidetracked by art, music or love. 

But in the odd, final scenes of the film, the personal survives. Yevgraf cares about his niece. Stalin's attempt to create a new kind of person has failed.