"Extending beyond the usual or ordinary, especially in size or scope."

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2005)

My "Summary" is one of the definitions of Epic, and it applies to this film perhaps more than any other. The life of T.E. Lawrence is shown as few other men have ever been presented.
Born Thomas Edward Chapman, the bastard son of Thomas Chapman and Sarah, the governess of his children, the man we know as T.E. Lawrence rose from what could have been the lowest possible social circumstances to become the best-known English-speaking warrior of his time. How much of his fame is deserved, and how much is due to the publicity generated by the newsreels of Lowell Thomas is hard to say now, but there is no denying that Lawrence was an extraordinary man. David Lean was an equally extraordinary filmmaker.
As the reader may've guessed, I'm a student of the life of Lawrence, inspired as a young teenager by seeing this movie. I now know that the movie is not a precisely-accurate historical document, but it imparts the basic chronology of the best-known era of Lawrence's life, as well as a feel for the nature of the man. His physical appearance -- 5'6" and plain of face -- was nothing like the handsome, 6-foot Peter O'Toole, but he clearly possessed at least some of the personal flair ascribed to him in this film.
Creation of the film was a monumental task, with much of the filming occurring in temperatures exceeding 125 degrees Fahrenheit (!!). The crew had to invent ways to cool the cameras, to keep the film from being destroyed by heat before it was processed. The fact that the crew's shared suffering resulted in this excellent film and not mass murder is a tribute to the director.
I won't rhapsodize about the cast, the scenery, the sheer mass of people required to make Lawrence of Arabia, I'll just sum up with this: this is an all-time great film, and should be seen by everyone. That's it.