AFI #7: Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 15, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: David Lean

Cast: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, I. S. Johar, John Dimech, Zia Mohyeddin, José Ferrer.

"Shit, it's the cops."

I'm only seven films into my journey through the American Film Institute's top 100 films and the common thread I'm noticing in the best films is complex characters. Most main protagonists have been painted in shades of grey, not black and white, and are all the more fascinating for their flaws.

(The only exceptions so fair in the countdown have been the all-singin', all-dancin' protagonists of Singin' In The Rain, which has lots of other great things going on, and Raging Bull's Jake LaMotta (controversial, I know), who is just plain dumb, violent, misogynistic, and lacks any real nuance, and thus (in my book) is boring and uninteresting (tell me why I'm wrong in the comments).)

Which brings us to T.E. Lawrence, as portrayed by Peter O'Toole with a career-making and career-defining performance. Lawrence is one of cinema's most fascinatingly complex characters, and Lawrence Of Arabia is an enigmatic portrait of an historical figure who was reportedly as mysterious in real life as he is portrayed here.

After witnessing his ho-hum death, we learn about him first through off-hand comments from mourners at his funeral, and then through his own strangeness as we see him work a lowly position with the British army in Cairo, circa WWI. He talks in riddles, calls people by their full names, and puts out a match with his bare fingers, revealing the trick to be "not minding that it hurts".

If you're hoping Lawrence will make more sense as the story progresses, then I have bad news; he only gets more puzzling as the film progresses. Why is he doing the things he's doing? Is it purely ego, or does he genuinely think he's doing good?

These questions are the driving force of the film. Lawrence is both warrior and philosopher, cruel and kind, violent and meditative, egomaniacal and humble, mere mortal and wannabe messiah. The contradictions are captivating, as is his slow downward spiral toward the nastier sides of his duelling traits. As Empire's Kim Newman wrote, Lawrence seesaws "between inspired romantic rebel and traumatised psychopath; a magnificent Kane-like enigma at the heart of a film that never takes the easy way out by 'explaining' the hero's contradictory character".

As Lawrence creeps toward godhood, saviour and messiah, he is often framed as a small figure against a vast expanse of sand and sky. The desert is as much a character in the film as Lawrence, and it's one he battles and tries to tame. He wars with the elements, and with every victory, he is seen as a miracle worker, and increasingly starts to believe his own bullshit.

"They can only kill me with a golden bullet," he says at one point, and it's intended as a joke, but you sense he secretly believes it. It's one of the many magical moments in O'Toole performance, which is never short of riveting. His comfort in the desert, his ill-at-ease demeanour when he returns to "civilisation", his increasing bravado, his bloodlust - O'Toole and his piercing blue eyes are in sterling form. In Allan Hunter's Book of Movie Classic's, he marvels how the inexperienced O'Toole's "performance of riveting intensity holds the film together".

Other great star here is director David Lean, who captures the desert unlike any other director before or since. Shot on Super Panavision, he paints glorious widescreen vistas, using long, slow wide shots taken from a huge distance away to emphasise the scale of the place and the insignificance of the people in it.

Lawrence Of Arabia is ballsy, bravura film making on a scale rarely seen at the time. The battle of Aqaba is the astonishing centrepiece, but there are numerous times where you have to marvel at the insane logistics behind what you're seeing on the screen. Steven Spielberg, who called the film " a miracle" and helped restore it for its 2000 DVD release, estimated the film would cost $285 million to make in 2000 - inflation puts that figure above $435 million in 2020.

For all its cast-of-thousands staging and crazy battles, it's also artful and shows Lean's genius. Watching Omar Sharif materialise out of the heat haze, or see a lit match cut to a sunrise are examples of an artist at work. 

On top of this we have Maurice Jarre's dune-inducing strings, Robert Bolt's literary script, Omar Sharif playing a brilliant second fiddle to O'Toole, Anthony Quinn's wonderful brashness, Alec Guinness bringing dignity to some unfortunate brownface, the always welcome Claude Rains, and a story that encompasses both the arrogance of colonialism and the best and worst of individuals.

Despite winning seven Oscars at the time, Lawrence Of Arabia's greatest triumph came in 1989 when Lean restored it to its original length and inadvertently restored his career in the process. After the failures of Lean's later films, Lawrence rode out of the desert once more to save the day, elevating its director and this sandswept epic to its rightful place among the great epics of cinema.