A film that literally excites the senses...

Rating: 10/10 (29 November 1999)

David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" is one of the few films that legitimately deserves to be called great It appears on virtually all "ten best" lists and reveals deeper layers of meaning with repeated viewings
Lean, a man devoted to the art, gives "Lawrence of Arabia" its spectacular values... He unifies the sand and the sun to flame out the silver screen... Maurice Jarre's terrific music escorts the appearance and disappearance of the sun below the horizon in the sleepy desert...
"Lawrence of Arabia" is a prodigious labor, a masterful mixture of fact and artistry, a masterpiece of intimate moment and spectacular largesse, a film that literally excites the senses... In a visual sense, Lean combines a sure sense of place with an approach to the action that he borrows from an unlikely sourceJohn Ford Lean turns his vast desert canvas into another Monument Valley, and when his Bedouins ride across it, they are not far removed from Ford's cavalry In many of the early scenes, the stately gait of the camel's walk gives the film a slower pace, and this is precisely what Lean is trying to achieve Lean even manages to surpass Ford with his understanding of the relationship between his characters and the landscape; how the desert changes those who go into it
The film is the story of a solitary adventurer who always knew he was different, but in Arabia he discovers that his proportions are heroic... Perhaps this is the secret of Lawrence of the legends  that at the bottom of all the violent action is a protagonist about whom one cares... A puzzling personality whom one glimpses but never fully understands... Throuhout the picture one has a sense of a man discovering his own unique dimensions...
Lawrence's mission, largely his own creation, is to unite the feuding Bedouin tribes under the leadership of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), and to keep the British politicians, as personified by Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains), from putting the Arabs under their colonial thumb after World War I is over It is accomplished through a semi-episodic series of battles and raids where Lawrence is sometimes accompanied by Ali (Omar Sharif) and Sheik Auda (Anthony Quinn), and equally difficult bureaucratic struggles he faces with Gen. Allenby (Jack Hawkins).
All the conventional elements of the genre are at peaks of excellence here: The stretch desert with its white golden sands; peril, anywhere and everywhere; dangerfor Lawrence of Arabia is a film about guerrilla warfare; prowessLawrence crosses Sinai on foot; physical tortureLawrence in the hands of the Turkish bey; impossible mission Lawrence takes the seaport of Jordan from behind; ruthlessnessLawrence shouting 'take no prisoners' leading his men to put to death a Turkish column...
Every component is here, everything one needs for a great adventure film, many spectacular sequences, each of them so perfect: Lean cuts to the sun again and again, turning it into a character; the scene in Feisal's tent when Lawrence first talks with the king; Lawrence striding on top of a captured train, parading before rows of cheering Arabs; the scene between Lawrence and Ferrer illuminating Lawrence's strange perversity, a mixture of masochism and repressed homosexuality; the scene when a Beduin prince appears on his camel, an exceedingly long take in which a strange figure is first resolved out of waves of heat and then, as he approaches, becomes a frightening threat to Lawrence's escort at the desert well...
The photography, the script and the acting are so superb that "Lawrence of Arabia" becomes a lavish epic winner of 7 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Directing, Color, Cinematography, Sound, Muscial Score and Film Editing...