can only be appreciated on a really big screen

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2010)

David Lean's stunning 1962 portrait of the fabled World War One adventurer is sometimes hard to pin down, and perhaps for good reason. Filming Robert Bolt's thoughtful script against the spectacular wide-screen panoramas of ace cinematographer Freddie Young, with Maurice Jarre's justifiably famous music score for support, makes it all too easy to overlook some of the finer nuances of such a complex character. Lawrence went into the desert not only to enlist Arab aid against the Turks, but also (in modern jargon) in a quest of self-discovery. In the end he found more than he bargained for, after being transfigured by the unforgiving landscape into something more than just an ordinary man, but something less than the near-deity all but worshipped by his Arab hosts. The length of the film (overture included) is intimidating, but seeing it again on the big screen shames the petty ambitions of today's ersatz blockbusters, proving in truly epic proportions that intelligent entertainment is not an oxymoron.