Lawrence of Arabia - Movie Review

Lawrence of Arabia is about power, posturing, politics, pride, and pettiness. And spectacle. Big-screen epic spectacle. 

If there’s one thing that provides that spectacle, it’s the sweeping panorama of the barren desert. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film which so fully impressed on me the vastness of it, and the corresponding inconsequentiality of a man on a camel, with only a water-skin between him and death.

It’s quite ironic, isn’t it? And this film lives and breathes irony, placing characters in so many incongruous situations that it gets a little ridiculous.  

The first is a placard on a peaceful country road marked “DANGER.”

It’s not much of a spoiler that Lawrence dies an ignominious death—thrown from his motorcycle into a clump of bushes—in the first five minutes of the film. For a while, I was confused as to why the filmmakers chose to start us here. I recognized the heavy contrast of cutting from a motorcycle accident in verdant Dorset to conversation in the halls of a British colonial outpost to the barren, utterly foreign desert, but I felt it sucked the uncertainty from Lawrence’s story—we knew he lived, so what suspense was there?  (Spoilers below)

But I was looking for the wrong thing. This isn’t a conventional film—with a hero who has a properly heroic goal, a properly heroic way of achieving it, and a comfortingly predictable story arc. It’s not an adventure film where we worry if the protagonist will live, nor a historical film with a focus on social commentary, nor an inspirational film, with easily identifiable heroes and villains. It has a bit of all of those things, but mostly, it’s about a very odd, extraordinary man.

Full disclosure here: I know little to nothing about the real T.E. Lawrence. I did have a vague idea about his guerilla warfare against the Turks, and was under the impression that he was venerated in a Gandhi-esque way for his tolerance of other cultures. He wrote The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which sounds very guru-ish. I have no idea about accuracy, but the character that Peter O’Toole creates makes me believe he is Lawrence (much like I believed Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln.)

That level of belief took a while to build—several actors in the film, both O’Toole and some “Arabians” felt overly conscious that they were acting. The conventional, slightly stagey style of delivery is rather distracting, and lacks the edge of foreignness that could have emphasized the culture clash even further. O’Toole himself has about all the physical personality of a Barbie doll, and comes off, at first, as stiff and somewhat delicate. However, this ultimately adds to his interest. He combines the awkward, self-conscious air of an innocent with the fierce volatility of a genius. Intelligent, but insecure, he's desperate to fit into a people not his own. As a protagonist, he's a bit of a dark horse, even to the audience. He refuses to show the appropriate emotion at the appropriate times, instead he is enigmatic and a little unreal.

Sending this nameless 27-year-old to “talk turkey” with an Arabian prince seems insane. Lawrence certainly hasn’t shown himself to be diplomatic, instead stirring up trouble by refusing to toe the line. “It’s my way.” Turns out, his way is sometimes necessary, and he uses it to successfully stir Arabia to revolt against her oppressors, the Ottoman Turks. At first the natives distrust him, but he quickly proves himself as a true son of the desert, embracing Bedouin clothing and manner, and quoting the Koran by memory. If it hadn’t been true, it would have been unbelievable. Irony, again.

After some of his more unbelievable exploits, the Arabs begin, nearly, to revere him as a god. Indeed, he seems to embrace the title, being convinced of his own invincibility and accepting the hero-worship of two young acolytes. Following one of the film’s best (if a bit tedious) sequences, he says of fate, “Nothing is written.” After that, they no longer call him “English,” but—more or less—use his name. Lawrence’s friend Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif)—amusingly enough, the everyman stand-in—isn’t quite sure how to relate to him. Lawrence is dramatically, obviously broken—his arrogance is proof of that—but he’s also remarkable; he isn’t quite human.

Like Winston Churchill, Lawrence can strategize with the best of them, but he’s vain and thin-skinned, and as with all idols, it’s only a matter of time before he falls. (As an interesting aside, Lawrence writer Robert Bolt created an almost exact opposite to Lawrence in Sir Thomas More of the excellent film A Man for All Seasons.) 

The turning point comes when (during an odd, freakish scene) Lawrence realizes that yes, some things are written, such as the fact that he is white. This indisputable fact shatters his self-image, and he implodes on himself, creeping back to the ranks of the British army. But his superiors will have none of it. He’s extraordinary, whether he wants to be or not. Lawrence sheepishly accepts this, but he has lost his ability to define himself, and therefore whatever basis he had for identity is gone. I am extraordinary? Yes, sir, whatever you say, sir. 

Lawrence is never quite the same after that. His kingdom begins to fragment, before completely unraveling. He spins from manic cruelty to passive compliance. Only once (from what I remember), does he show the same flash of divine authority, when he stops Ali from starting another feud, and this only emphasizes his English, Christian, compromising identity. (Earlier, for instance, he manipulated an Arabian lord by using Arabic methods—appealing to the man’s vanity: “It is your pleasure.” To the Arabs, mercy is unknown, Prince Faisal observes.) Ali, torn between fear of the god and love of the man, leaves. Lawrence himself is sent to England.

He murmurs, “Home.”

The irony, as the immaculately dressed Lawrence looks back from a military jeep at the romance of the dunes and the grubby roadside Bedouin, is abundant.

4.5/5 stars

Hannah Long