There With Him

Rating: 9/10 (16 November 2013)

Considering that our earthly wandering in its part consists of many rather obnoxious and disappointing film experiences, it's still so that even one blissful erases a hundred sour ones. These wonderful films, so much larger than life, it seems, that the disks they're stored on hardly contain them, ferocious as they are, make the heart beat faster.
I've seen this quite a few times, and still it always puts me in my place as if I had somehow managed to unravel its secrets. Each time the journey is, as it is with the greatest of epic masterworks ("2001: A Space Odyssey", "Profound Desires of the Gods" and their ilk) not only undiminished but even more powerful. Some of the images are so strong I'm not only carrying them with me but implementing them in my own life.
And this only considering the visual narrative. This is, in other respects as well, perfect. The cinematography, music, script and dialogue, the ensemble acting, and, above all, O'Toole. He's so brilliant: Proustian in his self-reflexive fragility, flamboyantly sexy (more than Deloin at his most Deloin, or Bowie at his most Bowie).
Please remember that film criticism offers subjective opinion as objective fact, and is more than anything an exercise in projected power. That said, this is so perfect it's hard not to be vague, not to lapse into paroxysms of emotion and say nothing at all. This might not be a bad thing in the end, however. One of the motifs in the film is the film is exactly this kind of otherworldliness and the disconnect between the two worlds: how can anyone in the film understand why Lawrence fell in love with the desert, and did the things he did, except for us, who were there with him?