Lawrence

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 1999)

The first time I saw Lawrence of Arabia was in 1963 and I wanted not to like it, since Peter O'Toole had been so vaunted as the shoe-in Oscar winner for that year and I wanted Burt Lancaster to win for Birdman of Alcatraz. I came away from that movie very much impressed by its physical beauty but even more captivated by Lawrence himself. With all the grandeur of the scenes, for me the story of a man so complicated and full of mystery was what I took away from it driving home from the theater. I went right to my local library to get T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and even read most of its thousand-plus pages. For me, amidst the spectacle and sweep of the movie, the idea of this conflicted man who thought he was godlike and was humbled, not only by his physical nature but also by his ability to betray that which he thought he loved, made Lawrence of Arabia unique. I'd never seen an epic movie quite like that before or since ... and it also made me become a Peter O'Toole fan forever! I saw "Lawrence" one other time in big-screen and probably about ten more times on tv, and I never tire of it. It deserves its reputation as a classic portrayal of the mystery of personality amidst the chaos and hypocrisy of a "great war."