another popular movie which has little historical accuracy

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2006)

I do not how to start writing a comment on this movie."Lawrence of Arabia" is today regarded as a masterpiece of world cinema and it has been consistently on the top 250. I'm not questioning the value of top 250 anymore just because it does not really reflect the total gusto of all the cinephiles. But I wonder whether 70-mm widescreen, color cinematography, epic war scenes or heroism are enough to make a movie acclaimed. The first thing I'm looking for in a movie is "historical accuracy".Since the movie takes its name from the leading character Lawrence let me ask you a question to those who casted a top-ten vote for this movie?Do you really know how Lawrence looked like?Six foot two inch Peter O'Toole differed strikingly with the real Lawrence, who was almost nine inches shorter.Lawrence was not a gung-ho drama queen who lead a nation to freedom.Most scenes such as the attack on Aqaba were heavily fictionalized from the writings of Lawrence.You can easily question how much he is reliable.Lawrence mentions in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom that he was raped by the Turkish Bey which was called into question by the historians.(Check out the article : Lawrence of Arabia 'made up' sex attack by Turk troops By Elizabeth Day) Not only most scenes are heavily fictionalized but some characters are a bunch of fiction too like Sheriff Ali,Mr. Dryden and Colonel Brighton. The movie neither tells you anything from the Turkish point point of view nor does it tell anything about the real Arab points. Yes it's a well-know truth that the Arabs were tricked into fighting against the Turks by the British and they have been paying the price by being belittled by the westerners for centuries.But the movie shows us only a bunch of Bedouin tribes which are desert dwelling nomadic people. Not every Arab is (and was)a Bedouin.Plus when I see "Language: English / Arabic / Turkish" tag on IMDb I can't help laughing.It's fact that Westerners have always imposed their language on the nations they dominated. Arabs started to speak English then just like some African nations started to speak French. Yes they have been living under the Turkish rule and they have not been speaking Turkish. That's the truth but how on earth from a ten year old kid to pariahs everybody speaks English.Let alone that the actors who play the Turkish soldiers do not even look like a Turk they do not even speak a word of Turkish. The only Turkish word you hear is "su"(water)which is spoken by a wounded villager on the hospital in Damascus. The historians say that the real Lawrence actually shunned the limelight, as evidenced by his attempts after the war to hide under various assumed names but the British officers certainly did not the find the attack outrageous since the Great(!) British Empire can finally be positioned at a table with the French to take care of the rest of the Turkish empire.And according to Wikipedia the film's portrayal of General Allenby as a cynical, manipulative superior to Lawrence is not entirely accurate either. Allenby and Lawrence respected and liked each other, and Lawrence once said of Allenby that he was "an admiration of mine"... There are people who claim that such fictionalization was necessary to dramatize the great Lawrence character but I say "watch out! The devil lurks in the little details"