Intimacy behind grandness

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2002)

What I mainly love from David Lean is his portrayal of the emotional intimacy of his characters (be it main or secondary), for which was mainly rewarded in lower-budgeted films like Summer Madness or Brief Encounter but mainly in huge projects like Doctor Zhivago or this one.
Some people keep complaining of the biographical inaccuracy here and there but they seem to miss the point that this is a film about an individual, the name is actually unimportant: what we should analyse is his emotional relationship with the desert, with the Arab men around him (including permanent homosexual overtones), with his leadership status, the British authorities, the Arab ones, etc etc. This is NOT a historic film or a biopic, it explores the rise and decline of a man's faith, integrity and enthusiasm, his evil as well as his heroism, to sum up HIS MIND and HIS FEELINGS, from piety and innocence to madness and violence and on to apathy and skepticism. This also applies to all the characters that surround him, all of them superbly characterised, none of them gratuitious or one-dimensional.
The cinematography, as usual in Lean's work, stands out at every stage: wonderful photography, marvellous acting (Omar Sharif was only this great when directed by Lean, and what to say of Anthony Quinn, Alec Guinness and especially Peter O'Toole?) and great narration (it is this long and yet you're never bored). A masterpiece like all the others I mentioned above, nothing more... And nothing less.