Puny :"critics," great filmmakers

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2008)

After a near half-century, self-styled "experts" presume to judge this David Lean classic for all time. They cite "historic inaccuracies" and sniff at the disjunct to "reality." Forgetting, all the while, that "movies" are, sui generis, fiction, along with ALL presumed representations of events past, present, or future. The reality of the moment is shared by ALL participants, and each has his/her own vantage point and interpretation. That the "director" of "Blithe Spirit," "Brief Encounter," AND "A Passage to India"must answer to mere poetasters, is, to me, both irrelevant AND irreverent. This film is a revelation of desert and Bedouin,both of which antedate our puny "westerm" likes. Check Wikipedia for all references, from millennial desert tribes to latterday movers-and-shakers like the Arab Bureau and Lawrence himself, his 250-thou-pounds a month included. My only quibble is with the psychosexual take: seems to me Lawrence would have er, ah "enjoyed" his same-sex Turko encounter.