LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

When you witness a man of action travel to a far away land and fight to unite and liberate a native people from their current national enemy, could you truthfully say you knew him well?

In the film’s opening, a journalist attempts to ask this question to those who watched over T.E. Lawrence’s work around the years he was practically heralded as The Unofficial King of The Desert: “Did you know him well?”. Many say they didn’t know him at all while others hold their true thoughts away from the ears of the tabloid media. But, true to this film, everybody seemed to have had their own personal insight into T.E. Lawrence’s character. Robert Bolt’s script is full of people chipping away at figuring out who Lawrence really was, (“Thy mother mated with a scorpion” is my personal favourite remark), and David Lean and Peter O’Toole give you no reason to think there isn’t a hint of truth in what is said. But still, with this in play, the film retains the idea that Lawrence was some kind of engima to be solved, even to his closest companions who were willing to follow him to the ends of the Earth.

Telling a story of biblical proportions, the film version of T. E. Lawrence hardly buckles under the tremendous weight of his adventure across the sands for most of the film’s duration: in fact, he slips quite nicely into the role of the “white saviour from the west” until this romanticised notion meets a harsh, epiphanic reality. It could be said this epic is yet another interpretative adaptation of the Lawrence’s actual autobiographical accounts, particularly his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom. To me, the film serves as more of a critique of the sheer range of these differing views on Lawrence’s life. The wisdom of the film isn’t about faithfully capturing who this young army officer really was but about capturing how someone who has done the extraordinary can be changed by it. So, once you finally watch all 217-minutes of this awe-inspiring journey, ask yourself: “Did you know him well?”

Watched the 70mm restoration from 1988, on Widescreen DVD. Dec 26th, 2020