EXQUISITE!!!

Rating: 10/10 (12 February 2002)

It hardly can get better than this. O'Toole made his big splash in this one and rightly so. The film is breathtaking. As an anthropologist who worked with camel and cattle Bedouins for many years in Africa and the Middle East, I can only say the films captures much of the intrigue and paradox that makes up these fascinating people. Er Lawrence (as he preferred to be called) was likewise paradoxical, mercurial and contradictory. The film is just a masterpiece of cinematography and storyline. The myth of this amazing man comes to life in more ways than one. There are dozens of historical treatments on the Arabian campaign (called the "Revolt in the Desert" by Lawrence) and even more biographies of TE Lawrence, later AKA Shaw. None of them answer the questions that persist to intrigue us and perhaps, as the years slid by, we'll never know the true face behind the mask of a man, who on the outside surface was shy, retiring and self-effacing and at the same time who through his correspondence with such great lights as GB Shaw became a political gadfly. The film bring all of these points to bear leaving us with the same questions asked in the opening scenes of Lawrence/Shaw's funeral, "Who was he?"