Stunning in so many ways, grand and intimate and surprising!

Rating: 8/10 (4 March 2013)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Funny, but this epic masterpiece starts with a bit of clumsy direction, an almost (almost) corny motorcycle crash. And then the movie begins in more earnest with the rise and triumph of the title character. The production values seem to never flag from the moment we arrive in Africa (shot in Morocco and Jordan, mostly), with embracing scenery, huge casts of extras (and horses), unusual levels of excitement that seem historically about right, and some intensely wonderful acting.
This is a gutsy, highly polished British movie from the end of the great Golden Age of this kind of great dramatic style. The story is fascinating and grand, and the scenery is absolutely one of the central points throughout. You get sucked in and swept away with all the huge wide and often silent desert landscapes. And most of all, the story is astounding. It's about a man who is exceptional--a real man, not Bruce Willis in some office tower.
Peter O'Toole is at his best here. David Lean, the director, seemed to know how to keep him both rebellious and restrained. (If you see a later film, like "The Ruling Class," you'll see a typical overcooked performance from O'Toole, equally remarkable I suppose but less finessed.) This portrayal of the daring British military officer in the Arabian desert is not meant to be perfectly factual (there are lots of battles about the facts, online and even in the opening scenes of the movie), it's meant to be moving and historically significant, and historically close enough.
And it's personally impressive. This is a story that takes place on two main levels. One is the man's new understanding of the politics of the mideast in the 1910s and 20s. The other is the man himself, this wild and cunning and sometimes fearless and sometimes almost insane man who is able to adapt to Arab life and enter its problems from within and yet still remain thoroughly British in his attitudes. It's quite something to see, and O'Toole makes it believable more than you'd expect. If you met the real Lawrence of Arabia you might object that he's not playing his part quite right.
The movie also has lasting importance as the Arab world (or the Middle East as it is still called) goes through more political change. It makes what Lawrence accomplished all the more profound. You might say that if he hadn't done it someone else would have, that the rise of Arab power we inevitable. Maybe. But that's not what happened, and this is. In a way, the whole movie is about Lawrence trying to unify the Arabs. His goal at first is to defeat the Turks who are occupying Arabia, but it eventually becomes more personal. He identifies with the plight of the Arabs but never quite becomes one.
There are things that bring this down to earth a little, especially the playing with clichÃ©s (the photographer is good but sort of patched on, and some of the Arab characters are thinly sketched). But there is a host of wonderful actors, the one true Middle Easterner being Omar Sharif (he's Egyptian by birth, and he's quite good here). The other main ones are such good actors you don't quite remember they are English to the core--Alec Guinness and Claude Rains (quite old here, but still wonderful). Anthony Quinn (originally Mexican) is really good though his fake nose needed some better color--a weird thing for them to mess up on in a hugely complicated movie like this.
Most of all it's O'Toole and more O'Toole, appropriately. A penetrating, original, almost possessed performance within a gorgeous, long but not too long film.