Lawrence of Arabia . Austin Chronicle . 07-27-98

Lawrence of Arabia

DIRECTED BY: David Lean

REVIEWED: 07-27-98

Churchill said of T.E. Lawrence, "I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time ... we shall never see his like again." And one of the greatest men makes for one of the greatest films. A flurry of praise has been heaped of late on David Lean's gorgeous, breathtaking spectacle, which won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Cinematography for Fred A. Jones - all of it merited, and all of it even more reason to catch this movie in its imperative big-screen format. At the center of it all is O'Toole, remarkable in his first major motion picture as the deeply complicated Lawrence, the refined Englishman who became absorbed into the Arab culture and then later led them in battle against the Turks during World War I. While Maurice Jarre's rich, escalating score is thunderous in the first reel, the second is riddled rather by gunfire, explosions, and revolt. Here we witness the formerly noble and implacable Lawrence pillage, plunder, get mercilessly flogged by a nasty minded Jose Ferrer, resign, go crazy, vacillate, and resign for good. In the end, we learn little about the man himself, and merely the stuff of legends. But what really sticks is the lush, breathtaking imagery that not only captures the sweeping marvel of the desert - the shock of a pristine sunrise, the waves of blistering heat that so cruelly resemble oases - but also its ability to erode the arrogance and naïveté of man. And long after the question of Lawrence versus his intentions has dissipated, images of the man himself linger - the piercing azure of O'Toole's placid eyes, his face whipped with exhaustion and chalk white with sand, and his meandering footprints pressed in the vast, rippling desert.

--Sarah Hepola

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Lawrence of Arabia

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