I Like My Epics Gay

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2009)

"It's no wonder that nearly all the great founders of religion came out of the desert. It makes you feel terribly small, and also, in a strange way, quite big." – David Lean
Some brief points...
1. Of all of David Lean's films, "Lawrence of Arabia" is perhaps his most beautiful. Here's a director who waited months for the perfect sunset, who spent hours composing every shot.
2. Virtually every other sequence in "Lawrence of Arabia" is logistical nightmare, Lean having to frame grand compositions, choreograph huge crowds, build vast sets and manage hordes of animals.
3. Lean's "Attack on Aqaba" sequence is staggering. Lean built an entire town, with over 300 buildings, all for a single unbroken shot which tracks an army as it swarms a coastal city. When Lean's camera finally draws to a halt, revealing the Mediterranean Sea and Aqaba's massive coastal cannons, we can't help but gasp.
4. A super influential film. You look at "Lawrence" today and you see bits of "Star Wars", "Close Encounters", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Indiana Jones", "Kingdom of Heaven" etc, all over the place. The film contributed hugely to our cinematic vocabulary.
5. Unusual for a film this size, there was no second unit photography. Lean shot everything himself, too much of a perfectionist to abdicate duty.
6. Though it attempts to convey the intricacies of imperialistic politics and touches upon racial difference and homosexuality, the film's sense of geography and politics are a bit muddled, and its portrayal of Thomas Lawrence hardly factual. Indeed, because of people like Lawrence, and various other events, both before and after the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, the Middle East was carved up and artificially divided for the very purpose of destabilisation and proxy rule. The problems of this period extend to our era.
7. In his biography, Lean states: "I think the whole of this creativity is sex. There's no two ways about it. And if you want to go and make a good movie, the fact of it is that sex is terribly important. If you want to make a good movie, get yourself a new, wonderful woman and that movie will be fifty, if not seventy, percent better than it would have been if she hadn't existed. It lights everything up. You see, I think lack of energy and tiredness is sexual failure."
8. In a way, the film's also about Lean himself, and the way the alienation of Lawrence's homosexuality mirrors that of the artist. Lean was born to strict Quaker parents who banned him from going to the cinema. In response, he developed a fondness for the desert and a passion for exotic locales (on screen and off). "Lawrence of Arabia" itself almost plays as a kind of autobiography, a story about a man/director who travels to the desert, falls in love with its people, gains wealthy financing, has a grand vision and realises his dreams by managing, inspiring and directing thousands of men. In a way, the film is less about Lawrence the man than it is about creativity as a kind of libidinal drive; a sort of big budget take on Freudian sublimation, creative energy stemming directly from the libido.
9. Watching the film again, its amazing how preoccupied it is with personal identity and sexuality. The film opens with a scene which demonstrates that "nobody really knew who Lawrence was" and that any effort to "sketch" him on screen is "an exercise in futility". Later in the film a man ominously shouts "Who Are You?" when he sees Lawrence, and all throughout the film Lawrence is seen to be extremely conflicted, unsure how to act, how to dress, unsure of his very place in the world. Is he Arabic? Is he British? Is he masculine? Is he feminine? Which culture does he most identify with? Why has he turned his back on his country?
10. Of course Peter O'Toole portrays Lawrence as a very effeminate man. He's homosexual, sexually repressed and sexually conflicted. This is a guy who's psyche is so damaged by being rejected and alienated that his ego compensates by writing its own history, by creating an image of himself as an "epic hero", the "perfect man" who conquers nations and rallies thousands behind him. Watch how he admits to being sexually aroused by guns and sadomasochism, but reacts violently when a foreign General makes homosexual advances toward him. It's almost as though Lawrence's entire "hero persona" simply extends from this timid guy's desire to assert his own sexuality.
11. The film is suffused with sexual innuendos and homosexual jabs, ranging from subtle lines ("That's not the kind of man I am!") to more blatant signals (Lawrence dancing alone, obsessed with shaving etc).
12. Interesting too is the way Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt turn Lawrence's masochism into a kind of psycho-sexual anti-war statement. After taking part in a massacre, Lawrence slowly turns his back on his masters. "War is the villain of the piece," screenwriter Robert Bolt would say years later, "for it takes this fine and hardy man and turns his own best qualities against him, filling him with revulsion for himself."
13. The film is often praised for its visuals, but few mention how innovative Lean's sound design is. Lean uses the wind as music, makes excellent use of ambient or incidental noises and uses bubbles of silence to create some extraordinary moments of tension. He creates a wonderful aural tapestry.
8.5/10 – This may be the gayest epic of all time.