Based on the 1957 novel by Boris Pasternak, the romance is set during the final days of Czarist Russia and follows Zhivago, a political idealist, physician and poet. His life is tossed by the tides of history as he is torn between a life with his devoted wife, Tonia Gromeko and the passionate and mysterious Lara Guishar. Zhivago is not alone in his yearnings for Lara, competing for her affections with the young revolutionary Pasha Antipov and the aristocrat Viktor Komarovsky.