I've never seen anything like this before ...

Rating: 10/10 (15 June 2000)

I mean, wow. Of the 72 films to have won a Best Picture Oscar, David Lean has directed two; and I suspect (but I'll let you know when I've seen them all) that his are the best two. The other one is "The Bridge on the River Kwai". This is almost Kwai's companion piece. In some ways Colonel Nicholson and Lawrence could scarcely be more different: the former is completely transparent, the latter utterly opaque. But both films are studies in wartime leaders with unusual codes of honour. Although both films are tragedies, "Lawrence of Arabia" is a far greater tragedy: it's "The Bridge on the River Kwai" with all the optimism drained out. It is terrible, sad, bleak, exquisitely depressing. So why does it leave audiences feeling so exhilarated? Why does one find oneself walking on air out of the cinema? Simply, I think, because it's so very, very good. Like Beethoven's music, it will thrill you even if it's in a minor key; possibly it will thrill you and sadden you at the same time; but certainly it will thrill you.
The photography is so perfectly adapted to the wide screen that it couldn't possibly make sense on television. Any network executive who screens this film has committed a crime. I'm amazed how real everything looks: almost every shot is so convincing one thinks it couldn't possibly have been planned, yet so perfect, it must have been. -But once I begin to praise the elements of the film one by one I will never stop.