Actually, I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I was a movie critic’s cliche.
Tonight I’ll watch Dr. Zhivago for the first time as an adult, which I am confident will completely alter my experience.
So, it should be obvious that my movie education is seriously lacking - what other grand, sweeping epics - romantic, historic, whatever - would you recommend?
I love long movies that make me cry.
Well, YMMV, but here’s a few suggestions.
Lawrence Of Arabia (director’s cut) (1962)
Little Big Man (1970)
Ran (1985)
At Play In The Fields Of The Lord (1991)
Rabbit Proof Fence (2002)
several of these are far too short to deserve the title, "epic’ but I thought they warranted a mention.
The Good Earth (1937)
They Were Expendable (1945)
Spartacus (1960)
Hawaii (1966)
Reds (1981)
The English Patient (1996)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Legends of the Fall – so-so movie, but definitely epic in scope and setting, family melodrama, tragic mad passions, etc.
Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans is a longish action/adventure/war/romance pic, based on the 18th-C. James Fenimore Cooper novel. Enjoyable and well done, if perhaps not a true epic.
Jean De Florette and its sequel, Manon of the Spring, when considered together, form a gorgeous, tragic generation-spanning epic of injustice, sexuality, and revenge in a provincial French village.
Bertolucci’s multi-generational epic of politics, wars and family 1900 (Novecento) garnered mixed critical reactions, but it’s certainly worth seeing.
The Man Who Would Be King
The obsessive auteur Werner Herzog will always be remembered for his Amazonian epics Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo.
Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast, set mostly in some godforsaken swamp/jungle region in Central America, echoes some of the mad passions of the Herzog epics.
Ben-Hur (surely you’ve seen this one, though.)
Another “well, duh” recommendation: the whole “Godfather” series (yes, I’m including Part III, and don’t pit me for that).
I second a lot of the previous recommendations, and esp. Lawrence of Arabia and the Kirk Douglas/Stanley Kubrick Spartacus. A fun companion piece of sorts (if considerably inferior) to Spartacus would be The Vikings, which came out shortly before and also paired Douglas with Tony Curtis.
One star of the also-recommended Rabbit-Proof Fence, David Gulpilil, was the Aboriginal youth who co-starred with Jenny Agutter in Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout, in which the two teens walk through the Aussie Outback. If you want an Aboriginal actor to trek through the Outback, Gulpilil’s your man…
Have you seen the action/comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy? It had a certain epic quality to it, considering it tied together three intertwining plots against an expansive South African backdrop…
I’ve never seen Kurusawa’s Siberian adventure epic Dersu Uzala, but it has a great reputation.
And don’t miss “The Gods Must Be Crazy 2” Absolutey the funniest movies dealing with Africa I’ve seen. I bought the 2 dvd set today.
Amazing stuff - and honestly, I haven’t seen 99% of the movies here. I’ll be getting a laptop within the next week or so, and will be using it to watch movies on the train, so this is a great list to start with.
Thanks for such great input 
I have to give an extra nod to The Scrivener , for such a detailed and thought-out post.
If you liked “Out of Africa”, try “Nowhere in Africa”.
I found it a more powerful film.