Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

I tried to post a pic of a busty, blue-eyed blonde here, but due to some casting issues, we'll have to settle for two out of three.

I have really conflicting opinions regarding classics of any genre or field.  Specifically, I wonder sometimes if we as moderns are capable of appreciating knowledge, ideas, and art with the same perspective as those who have gone before.  In some ways, of course, we can never put ourselves in the "here and now" that was the "there and then," but shouldn't we at least try?  In doing so, do we forfeit our right to objectively comment upon the merits of the subject?  Or, worse still, would we lose our ability to admire unencumbered of our historically ignorant bias?

Recently, I had to (quite unexpectedly) confront this issue when I called my brother, who is a composer, and we started talking about whether my preference for Classical- and Romantic-era symphonies is illegitimate because it is rooted in an imperfect understanding of the social environment from which they emanated.  He's probably right, of course, at least as far as the music goes - he usually is - but I did get to thinking, "Oh my God, this is almost a perfect analogy for literary criticism!"  And this thought excited me, because I know a hell of a lot more about lit crit than music theory and it gave me an opportunity to change the subject.

One of the primary ongoing debates in literary theory over the last hundred years or so has been the extent to which (or whether) external, societal knowledge should color our analysis.  Alternately, some critics insist that the only material we should consider when analyzing a text is the text itself.  Film being a type of literature, it really makes sense that we should think of it in the same way, but I suspect that many of us (not without reason, I grant) are more or less unwilling to look at a film, especially a great one, and try to analyze it independent of any outside knowledge while remaining self-aware of the process.  We watch it and say, "I like it," but we don't know why and can't articulate our justification.  I want to change that.  This could be a catastrophic failure, so bear with me.  But hopefully Lawrence of Arabia will hold up.  I think it will.

Because the truth of the matter is, I think no matter how you slice it, this is a great film.  Let's start with the most straightforward approach and just consider the film in and of itself for a moment.  This is a very, very well-made movie, which usually gets credit for having two stars but probably deserves recognition for three: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, and Director of Photography Freddie Young.  Not only were O'Toole and Sharif both appearing in their first English-language film (a designation I must throw in there for Sharif), but there is not a single scene in which the two young actors do not fully embody the men they are portraying.  And this goes on for hours.  Nearly four hours, in fact.  So that's remarkable enough on its own.  O'Toole is especially striking, especially as his Lawrence walks the fine line of sanity, cobalt eyes at once expressionless and haunting (see photo above; ignore caption this time - more on that in a moment).  Not only were these actors fine choices for their parts, but the film happened to come into being at a moment in time when the genre (and film in general) was, to an extent, being redefined.  T.E. Lawrence and Sherif Ali (Sharif) feel real because actors were finally allowed to make them real; consider that just seven years earlier, James Dean shocked the film world with the gritty realism and vulnerability of his performance in Rebel Without A Cause.  By 1962, every character could have that depth.  Compare the performances in Lawrence with those in 1959's Ben-Hur, which seems as though it could be made quite easily into a stage production (it was, in 1899) and even the previously-discussed A Streetcar Named Desire (which was, of course, a play first and a movie second).  Even one of my favorite noirs - Kiss Me Deadly (1955) - is episodic and broken into scenes, by and large.  Lawrence, on the other hand, does not take place in a scene; it takes place in a world.

Much of that world can be attributed to Young, who figured out how to trick a hot, sandy desert into giving up some of the most memorable cinematography in film history.  Here's just one example:

Whew, really glad I figured out how to embed video.  Now, go back and take a look at that clip.  From 1:41 until 3:14 (only a minute and a half, but kind of an eternity in film), it's just two guys looking at a third ride a camel toward them.  With no soundtrack.  So why is it so damn mesmerizing?  Well, for starters, he's literally coming out of a goddamn mirage.  How do you set up that shot (and what's the aperture setting on that camera)?  What happens if you need a second take?  How in the world do you cue your actor - flare gun?  And if that's not enough to keep you wondering, keep watching the clip past 4:00 and pay attention to the blood stain.  Simple-ish special effect, yes, but goodness, is it ever effective, and Young calls no attention to it whatsoever.  Amazing stuff.

I promised I would stay objective, but I also promised that I would explain the picture caption from up top.  I can't have both, so here goes: Lawrence, especially in its first half, has a rather strong homoerotic undercurrent.  At one point, Lawrence loosely adopts two Arabic boys and treats them as he would some kind of cross between sons and lovers, and the is feminized in his treatment of them (at one point, he demands a hotel room with a bed that has sheets for his ward).  Also notable: this movie has no women.  None.  IMDb tells me that, at 227 minutes, this is the longest movie ever made to feature no women with speaking parts, but if there are any women with non-speaking parts, then I missed that.  So the objects of Lawrence's gaze must be male.  The classic film audience has been conditioned over the decades (and had been, even by 1962) to associate the male gaze with heterosexuality.  So Lawrence is unique filmically and, the film itself suggests, unusual personally (especially for the early 1960s!).

Lawrence falls into that rarest sliver of films that can be considered even more an experience than a movie.  Upon finishing the all-evening viewing (I had to stop for a Chipotle break), I'm not sure I have much to say about the story.  Honestly, a good chunk of the film concerns itself with shots of camels traversing the desert.  But go back and look at that clip again.  If I end up making a film in my lifetime, I would sell both my kidneys for a scene like that one.  Lawrence of Arabia has a half-dozen or more.  So the next time you have a free evening to burn, give it a watch.  It's a classic for a reason.