Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

**** (out of 4)

I'm really not sure I could add anything original to what has already been said about David Lean's masterpiece epic. The story is pretty simple as for nearly three hours we follow T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) who rises to the top as a hero but quickly things take a turn for worse. LAWREANCE OF ARABIA is certainly one of the most memorable epics that has ever been made and I think it's one of those films that just beg for a large screen and in particular a theater screen. Watching it at its 50th Anniversary re-release, one really has to be amazed at the pure grand scale of it all. Did it have to run for nearly three hours? Probably not but if you took anything out of the picture it simply wouldn't have that epic feel. Today movies are long for no reason what so ever whereas in the past and with films like this they were long for a purpose. The film is pretty much flawless but I think the greatest thing it does is the visual scale of everything. Those opening shots of the desert are just marvelous to see on a large screen and those beautiful shots of the sun rising and falling. The entire scope of the sand, the mountains and the eventual battles are just something truly marvelous to behold. It's also important that the story itself didn't get lost in this massive production and Lean really does a remarkable job at telling the story and especially during the second half when the film really does focus on Lawrence and his downfall. O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif and Anthony Quinn are all marvelous in their performances and you really can't see anyone else playing the parts. Add in the marvelous score, the wonderful cinematography and you've really got a film that deserves its legendary status.

Did you know that Cary Grant had been approached to play it? Yes, as well as Albert Finney and that made a lot more sense but it was Albert Finney who said, have you considered Peter O'Toole? Who? - Yes, I love that story. It goes to prove that certain things are meant to happen. I'm sorry if I'm going on about it. But I saw Lawrence Of Arabia for the nth time in a 70mm print in a crowded theater and what came across as the one major reason this film will be relevant forever is Peter O'Toole. His performance is timeless because it is unique. Cinematic and theatrical but always true. David Lean brilliantly created a sense of intimacy in O'Toole's eyes within the vast, arid landscape. I know the film has its detractors. I heard once director Michael Apted call it a "silly movie" Wow, I had Michael Apted's quote in my mind when I saw the film last and for the life of me, I don't know what he meant. I love this film.

It is, in a way, depressing to watch this movie today. One winds up contrasting it with the sort of technologically slick and aesthetically shallow spectacles, like "Titanic", that garner the sort of adulation that a truly great movie like "Lawrence" received in its day, and one realizes how far we have fallen.

Ignore David Lean's painterly technique, the way he fills the screen like a canvas. Ignore Freddie Young's stunning cinematography in fulfillment of Lean's vision. Ignore the fabulous score by Maurice Jarre. Ignore the stupendous cast. Ignore the topnotch script.

What we have, beyond all this, is an absolutely gripping and psychologically perplexing character study of a uniquely enigmatic individual that keeps us on the edge of our seats for the full length of the movie. "Lawrence", at over 200 minutes, goes by faster than many a movie of half its length, due to Lean's brilliant pacing and direction, and superb acting all around. To make a comparison in the world of music, this movie, like Mahler's 8th symphony, is a universe contained within itself.

Of course, it is an exercise in self-denial and philistinism to watch this movie in anything other than the wide-screen - or "letterbox" - format, due to Lean's complete use of every inch of the wide screen. To watch it otherwise is to miss half of Lean's intention.

To use a hackneyed phrase, they simply don't make 'em like this anymore.

Although having just watched Lawrence Of Arabia again though I am bowled over by the size of the epic, I still can't believe that for the entire length of the film, the word oil was not mentioned. If it were done today it sure would be.

T.E. Lawrence's story fascinates people today more than ever because he was in the center of the events that gave us the Middle East we have today. In the previous century and a half questions about that area revolved around the Ottoman Empire, the so-called sick man of Europe for that conglomerate of territory spilled into quite a bit of Europe. What's to happen if one country gets control of the place should that aging and decrepit empire falls apart. The question was postponed right up to World War I when Ottoman Turkey committed itself to the Central Powers.

It was time then for the various peoples still under Ottoman control to rise and rise they did. In Arabia a young staff officer named T.E. Lawrence gained the trust and confidence of many Arab leaders and had a lot to do with uniting them and forming an army to chase fellow Moslems, the Turks out of the area and helping the British and French win in the Eastern theater of World War I.

If going native which was the expression used by the British for one of their's who starts to identify with those he's supposed to subjugate than T.E. Lawrence went native in a big way. When his fellow countrymen did not keep pledges made to his Arabs he opted for a life of obscurity which is what he got until his death in 1935.

David Lean when he couldn't get Marlon Brando for the part, opted instead for a young Irish player named Peter O'Toole who he had seen in the Walt Disney version of Kidnapped two years earlier in a small role. It was a felicitous choice as O'Toole became the star he remains to this day as a result of Lawrence of Arabia.

It's a complex role and one you have to keep the audience interested in for over four hours. O'Toole runs the whole range of emotions here. We see him as idealistic, as arrogant, as humble, as honorable, as a stone killer, even a bit of a fathead at times. Sometimes a few of these mixed together at different points. Although David Lean got him a stellar supporting cast, if your Lawrence isn't any good, the film would flop. But Peter O'Toole was up to the challenge, he got the first of seven Oscar nominations. In this particular year he had some stiff competition with Burt Lancaster for Birdman of Alcatraz, Jack Lemmon for The Days of Wine and Roses, Marcello Mastroianni for Divorce Italian Style and the eventual winner Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird.

Omar Sharif also making his first film for a world market got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Such Lean veterans as Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Anthony Quayle got plum roles. Anthony Quinn and Arthur Kennedy are the Americans in this film. Kennedy plays the fictitious Jackson Bentley who is really Lowell Thomas. Presumably Lowell Thomas did not want his name used here, but Thomas got his career started in the news field by reporting on T.E. Lawrence in this backwater theater of World War I, making his name famous and launching Thomas's own career in the process.

One thing ever so gingerly hinted at was T.E. Lawrence's homosexuality. You can see it in his relationship with the two young men Daoud and Farraj played by John Dimech and Michel Roy. There is the alleged incident of gang rape when he's taken by Turkish soldiers led by their commander at Deraa, Jose Ferrer. It too is part of Lawrence's story though if Lawrence of Arabia were made today, they would be far more explicit.

They would also be more explicit about oil instead of these unnamed 'British interests' that Lawrence is supposed to be really concerned with. You do get the idea that all they're interested in is the right of transit in the Suez Canal and the right to say who has the right of transit.

Still Lawrence of Arabia is one sweeping epic both capturing the grandeur of the Arabian desert with the complexity of the issues and the man surrounding the desert campaign in World War I.

A man has an inner drive that makes him peculiar and intense. He goes to the desert and falls in love with it and its people. Gaining powerful sponsors, he has a grand vision that he accomplishes by inspiring and directing thousands. But in a very short time, that grand work is compromised and disassembled by fat cats in offices who are concerned with different values.

True of both Lawrence and Lean. The legacy of Lawrence is still in violent disarray (I write this a short time after the Sept 11 attacks on New York). But Lean's vision was saved, and what a vision! Of this picture, it can be said that it is perfect if only because it is so visionary that it defines its own rules.

Lean's vision is also lean, with vast zones of sonic and visual silence -- several meditations on the unperceived. Though there is a story (who are you?) this is really a film of TE's 'Seven Pillars,' which creates a romantic vision of sculpted natural forces. So powerful a depiction that Islam experienced a faddish attraction in the West, a place now enjoyed by Tibetan Buddhism. That was before.

See here the original Obiwan, every intonation, movement and dress. See here Peter O'Toole's personality become completely entwined with the character, who is as fictionalized by our eye as by Lowell's. See the most expressive, anthropomorphic train wreck in history.

Watch a particularly interesting brand of acting by the 'Arabs.' Macho men are acting anyway, so an actor can play an actor when he lands such a role.

The star of the film is the clever eye of God, not the clockmaker or judge of the west but the chess player of the mirage. Its face is clearest in my mind when the Turk holds TE down for torture and smiles. Its hand in the creaking of Feisal's tent -- who would ever imagine the wind acting? (Kurosawa's 'Ran' at the beginning is the only other example I know.)

I have a few films I admire for various. mostly intellectual qualities. But in the direct matter of visual storytelling, this one tops my list.