The first Russian screen version of Boris Pasternak's legendary, Nobel prize-winning novel starts airing this week. In an interview with The Moscow News, Director Aleksandr Proshkin offers his own vision of Doctor Zhivago.

- I saw you shooting Doctor Zhivago. You looked like a man who had not slept for about two or three months. Is that right?

Almost right. We worked 12 hours a day without any time off. It was a real struggle. Much has changed on Russian television since I worked there last. First of all, the robust television-film industry was effectively destroyed and then a strange hybrid of soap operas and shoot-'em-up thrillers was built on its ruins. You realize of course that Doctor Zhivago has nothing to do with either of the two. I was making a film - a regular film - in the old, time-honored tradition: long shot, deep-focus mise-en-scene, medium and wide shot that can really capture the atmosphere - not all close-ups, get-'em-in-get-'em-out, as is common practice now.

The deadlines were tough, as were the budget constraints.

- Were these the only demands that producer Ruben Dishdishyan made for you?

He did not interfere in anything else, and I greatly respect him for his trust. He does look after his money, but I realize of course that this has nothing to do with greed but a strong sense of reality. I am grateful to Ruben that he decided to go for it. I am sure that no other producer would have taken up Zhivago. Ninety percent of viewers have never read the novel. I am fully responsible for what I am saying. I have heard many people say: "Yes, we know, it's boring." Or: "Why do we need a new version if there is a U.S. film?"

- So you came to Dishdishyan with Pasternak's novel under your arm and it was not he who called you?

He invited me to do something for television. To which I said that I hated television in its present form and did not want to do anything for it. Except, perhaps, for Doctor Zhivago. I said it being fully convinced that would never happen. But quite unexpectedly for me, Ruben said: "Do it."

- What was the main reason you took up this challenging project?

Any adaptation of a classic is based not only on a desire to express your feelings toward a great book, to converse and interact with it. Besides, whatever films I make (be it The Cold Summer of 1953 or Lomonosov or See Paris and Die or The Trio), it is always the same old story: an eternal declaration of love for my dear Motherland. Also for the people who live here. Meanwhile, Pasternak's novel is an ideal field for making this declaration. Adapting it for the screen has been my long-standing dream.

- Okay, but for what screen? Surely, there is some difference between the cinema and television.

Frankly speaking, I wanted both at once. Of course I was thinking mostly about the cinema. But I realized that that would be impossible: I would have had either to abridge the novel, or to present it in the form of a digest: he fell in love, married, divorced and died. Pasternak probably gave little thought to the possibility of its subsequent screen adaptation. He built the text according to laws far removed from the traditional canons of drama. In writing the script, Yury Arabov had to take these canons into account, so his is a personal version, a personal view. It has its own logic: Some lines that Pasternak developed in detail have been condensed, some characters have moved from the background to the fore, and vice versa. This daring is justified. A slavish illustration is simply unviable.

Pasternak's novel is about how we behave in different situations and under different circumstances; about what we allow to be done with ourselves, and what we do not; about whether we hear the voice of our conscience or suppress it. There are no black-and-white characters, cardboard cutouts - all good or all evil. There are no sinless people. Doctor Zhivago himself is a very human and vulnerable man. Of course his sins today seem laughable: Okay, he cheated on his wife - big deal. But for a member of the Russian intelligentsia, a sin will always be a sin.

A person who lives with an awareness that he has strayed, transgressed against moral laws is a different person. I am convinced that every one of us has a bit of Doctor Zhivago in his soul. Somehow or other, we all measure ourselves against him - a man who sacrificed his great gift for the sake of the people that he loved.

- Why do you say sacrificed? After all, he wrote great poetry.

He sacrificed his career, shunned success. He cared nothing for publicity and fame. Pasternak himself was a similar type of person and that was probably why he wrote an alternative autobiography in the form of a novel about Doctor Zhivago.

A real member of the Russian intelligentsia is always unsuccessful.

- There seems to be some contradiction between the novel's intense drama and the film's comfortable, convenient format placed in a prime-time slot - during supper at the end of a hard day's work. Something has to give. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am afraid that it is the tragic that has to be sacrificed to the comfortable.

I don't know anything about this. Throughout these years, I have been rather out of touch with television.

I did as I saw fit. Will people want to see it? It is commonly believed that if there is no shooting at the drop of a hat, if there are no gangster-style executions, if there are no scenes of mass violence and rape or if, alternatively, everything around does not turn into a beauty parlor, nobody will want to watch it. This is how our television bosses model the TV viewer. But the viewer is not a moron and he may be sick of all that trash. Doctor Zhivago appeals to many tastes. It provides a broad cross-section of Russian life, offers a vast perspective on Russia. Take, for example, Gone with the Wind: There is a melodramatic storyline, but there is also a second and third level - American mentality, a sense of space, the spirit of the country, etc. And so it is with Doctor Zhivago. Some people will not go beyond the melodrama, but some will go deep below the surface.

- Which type of viewer do you think will prevail - the former or the latter?

I don't know. But I can tell you that. I rarely shoot in Moscow, working mainly in the provinces.

I made my two latest films in the Orenburg region, Siberia. Once I went to a village on the border with Kazakhstan where I had a meeting with local residents. At one point a Kazakh boy of about 17 raised his hand and asked: "What do you think about Lars von Trier?"

- You were surprised that Kazakhs knew about the Danish film-maker at all?

I am surprised by the attempts to cast the Moscow scene as a countrywide scene. This country is vast and there are very many intelligent, thinking people. There are far more such people in the provinces than in Moscow. I believe in their perceptiveness, their responsiveness to this story, these vagaries of fate, and the sheer magic of the show that is born from image plasticity, light and color, remarkable acting, and a synergy of individualities.