This David Lean film, originally released in 1967, is the classic heroic epic film. Redefining at the time what that could be. The filming constantly astonishes you with its beautiful framing and composition. It is always worthy seeing this on a huge cinema screening, seize it should you ever get the opportunity.
T E Lawrence gets sent to Arabia purely on an information gathering assignment. But in the desert tribes he finds his real vocation, his cause in life, and returns to Cairo an unlikely hero. Its hard to separate fact from myth these days. Having tried to read Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom twice, and failed both times. I can confidently assure you he was a truly awful and turgid writer. Lean's film does show how the Lawrence myth started, how it helped and hindered the man himself.
Peter O'Toole plays Lawrence with all the charisma and sensitivity he can muster. For which he was rightly nominated for an Oscar. Some of the casting of Antony Quinn and Alec Guineas as Arabs certainly would not happen these days. But I have to say it still works because both are skilled actors. It ought to creak more, but somehow doesn't. Guinness, playing an Indian in a Merchant Ivory film twenty years later, felt considerably more ill considered and offensive.
The script hardly misses a mark showing you how Lawrence's ideal of a free Arabia, got betrayed by the secret Sykes Picot agreement. How he moves from being a man revolted by killing to one who madly revels in it. From someone who plays along with his image to someone who believes in it as his destiny, and becomes trapped within his own myth making. He is a heroic figure, but we are allowed to see the shadow side of his personal failings too. Had he not died in a motor bike accident at the age of 46, one wonders quite how perceptions of him might now have changed.
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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