Lawrence of Arabia at Film Forum

Continuing our love affair with David Lean, we saw Lawrence of Arabia last week. Golly, what a movie. The outsize epic tells the story of T. E. Lawrence, a young British officer who in large part instigates the Arab revolt against the Turks during World War I. He becomes so disillusioned and broken down by the horrors of war and politics, however, that he eventually retreats into anonymity in the English countryside.

The movie begins there, with his death at age 47 from a motorcycle accident (an aside: his doctor was so horrified by Lawrence’s injuries that he went on to create the motorcycle helmet). As the opening credits roll, the camera hovers over a man tinkering with a bike, walking into and out of the frame. Then the point of view switches, and Peter O’Toole’s face fills the screen as he rides, faster and faster, his blonde hair whipping madly. Rather than portray the crash a few minutes later, cinematographer Freddie Young, who won one of the movie’s seven Oscars, zooms in on Lawrence’s goggles, hanging from bare, spindly branches. Here’s a man who lives with passion and conviction, the sequence says, and here’s a movie that’s just big enough and bold enough to capture him.

When we mentioned that we’d be seeing L of A, a friend said, “I’m jealous you get to spend four hours with those eyes.” O’Toole and his baby blues, in their very first movie, completely captivate, as do the panoramic shots of the desert landscape. The story isn’t so bad either, as it shows how an intelligent, iconoclastic army sergeant, an archeologist by training, transforms into a mad, egotistical demigod capable of summoning thousands to the cause. Obviously a movie about a white westerner coming to help a group of nonwhites achieve independence resonates with today’s headlines, but we’ll leave those discussions for other venues. We’d rather just gape.

Photos: thanks and thanks