That scene was extremely sad for me as well, and the music being played still makes me cry every time I listen to it.
Yuri learns about his wife's demise after Lara leaves, and the impact of Tonya's letter has a true effect on his mind and soul.
He's standing in his childhood home, which is no longer a home. While he's reading the letter, the camera does a pan of the rooms, and we remember when Yuri and Tonya ran through the opulent rooms together as children, and we see Yuri as an adult, in his 40's, weathered, bitter, and beaten, standing in the schoolhouse which was once his home.
He's crying because he's lost his wife, children, and Lara. He's crying because he's lost his innocence, his mom, his dad, Tonya's parents, he knows that he still has a whole lifetime to live (he's still relatively young), and he knows he'll be living it in a whole new world.
And, it's a new world which literally flew right by him, because he hid during the entire Revolution, he completely missed the rebirth of Moscow.
What a brilliant novel, what a brilliant film.
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