I watched the 1965 David Lean film Dr. Zhivago recently. There's a lot to say about that movie, but for now, I'll stick to the fannish point of interest: Varykino.

Wait, that sounds familiar, I thought when I first heard it. Didn't Padme and Anakin go to Varykino?

And sure enough, they did.

In both movies, a couple flees from a war (or soon-to-be war) to an isolated, seemingly idyllic estate called Varykino. Coincidence? I don't think so. Especially not given the Alec Guinness connection.

Some background, because Dr. Zhivago is a long movie and probably not everyone has seen it. In Dr. Zhivago, the couple is Yuri Zhivago and his wife Tonya. (They also bring their young son and Tonya's father.) They don't actually get to live in the main house at Varykino - it's boarded up by order of the new Soviet government. They live in the guest cottage. But later, Yuri does live in the main house at Varykino - with Lara, the woman he has loved for years. It's one of those tragic, doomed affairs. They met after Yuri was married - to a really nice woman whom he does care about - and they're stuck in this revolution they don't want any part of which tears their lives to pieces. Eventually, they're separated, Yuri dies a few years later, and Lara disappears into a labor camp - though not before leaving behind her and Yuri's daughter (and another daughter with a different father, but I don't know what happened to her). Alec Guiness, who plays Yuri's brother, tracks down this daughter and tells her the whole story. She keeps insisting that Yuri and Lara are not her parents, though I think she warmed up to the idea at the end.

In Star Wars, the couple is Anakin and Padme. They're also caught up in a war (though they're more involved in it than Yuri and Lara), they're fleeing from danger, they have a tragic, doomed affair. Anakin "dies," from a certain point of view, and Padme really dies. But not before leaving behind a son and a daughter, whom Alec Guinness (/Ewan playing Alec playing Obi-Wan) - the guy who thought of Anakin as a brother - watches over and eventually meets. (Well, at least he meets Luke.) Luke and Leia weren't all that thrilled to find out who their father was, either, though for very different reasons, and eventually they (mostly Luke) made a sort of peace with it.

Whoever came up with that name for the Naberrie home in the Lake Country must have had so much fun planting that little connection for us to find.