Oscar and I spent Sunday afternoon and evening at the BAMPFA to watch Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962), for The Long View: A Celebration of Widescreen. This would be my fourth or fifth time to see this film, the last time being over a decade ago, and never previously on the big screen. I am finding Lawrence of Arabia so large that I can barely write about it.
One thing that I’ve been able to pick up on during this latest viewing (and I am assured this will not be my last viewing) is the consistently sharp edged and eloquent verbal exchanges — Alec Guinness as Prince Feisal has so many good lines — and monologues brimming with bravado. Too many great examples to cite here, so here’s a link to the IMDB page of memorable lines: Anthony Quinn as Auda Abi Tayi: I am a river to my people! et al.
There is the love between Lawrence and Sherif Ali (as pictured above, Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif are such lovely, lovely gentlemen that I can’t bear to think the last film we saw Sharif in was the alternate ending of 10,000 B.C., to which he lends his voice as narrator throughout), and certainly there is a kind of blurred sexuality to Lawrence which is apparent to me throughout the film; for example, I can’t help but think of one of his two young male servants as something more than a servant.
I say “love” here and mean philos but I also think I mean something else that entails fear and admiration, as well as a man’s attraction to another man’s charisma. I am trying to think now of why Sherif Ali admired Lawrence so much; I don’t know if he fully believed that a united Arab front which Lawrence promised was possible. Lawrence did earn Sherif Ali’s respect/admiration after not only successfully crossing the Nefudh Desert into Akaba, but also returning with Gassim, who had fallen off his camel a ways back in the desert and would have otherwise died (the “Nothing is written” segment, in which we understand that modern man determines his own destiny). Anyway, even as we see that Sherif Ali had aspirations of being a modern diplomat rather than a traditional tribal leader (as seen in the Auda Abu Tayi character), I was still a little confused by this loyalty.
Then of course there is the scene in which Lawrence is taken prisoner by the Turks. A rape occurs here, and its telling is so subtle and almost undetectable by our current standards. As per the T.E. Lawrence Studies page:
He is stopped by a party of soldiers and taken to the Turkish commander
What follows (while Ali waits in the street below) is fairly mild, compared to what you would expect in a modern film. But Lawrence of Arabia was made 40 years ago…
We see Jose Ferrer’s Turkish commander character caress Lawrence’s bared white skin, we see Lawrence’s eyes widen in horror of what’s to come, we see the soldiers hold him face down as the commander quietly unbuttons his shirt. Cut to the next scene, in which he’s dumped into the street, where Ali takes him back to their hideout cave. Lawrence is speechless and unfunctional, apparently broken, and Ali nurses him back to his senses.
Anyway, so much in this 227 minute film. I don’t know what else I can say here.
Tags: Lawrence of Arabia
