Cinema Reaches Its Zenith

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2010)

David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia stands, for me at least, as the greatest movie ever made. I wouldn't say it's my favourite – that title goes to Roman Polanski's Chinatown – but objectively I cannot conceive any movie superior, either on technical or acting matters. It's one of the few perfect movies I know. It's also one of the movies I'd gladly pay money to see on a big screen.
Using the life story of T.E. Lawrence, Lean, and his masterful screenwriter, Robert Bolt, create an epic movie about a British officer fighting in Arabia during World War I, who becomes a legend in his own time, the man known as Lawrence of Arabia.
The movie shows Lawrence befriending the Arabs, organising them in an army, leading a successful terror campaign against the Turks, becoming intoxicated with his own power and attempting to create an Arab state that would be free of any British influence.
Unlike the mediocre biopics that today merely illustrate a life, without any artistic flair, Lean and Bolt's masterwork celebrates the enigma that was Lawrence: they show him as an apparently mediocre officer who surprised everyone by becoming a master strategist; an officer loathed by his superiors and admired by the Arabs; a man very close to treason in his ambition to create an Arab State, going against all the political aspirations foreign interests had for that area; a poet who hid a sadistic streak. Nothing is simple in this many-faced man's life. Just compare the complexity of this figure with the treatment Nelson Mandela gets in Invictus, for instance, to use one modern biopic. In less than 10 minutes Mandela is explained, he holds no mysteries, all the complexity of his existence was reworked for mass consumption. At the end of 200 minutes, people will continue to scratch their heads trying to make sense of Lawrence of Arabia's personality.
As Lean develops the enigma that is Lawrence, he simultaneously rewards the viewer with some of the film-making ever. Ever shot is delicately composed, his camera captures the majesty and dread of the still desert, his characters are but ants in the wide canvases that he paints. One aspect of Lawrence personality that is much explored is his sense of superiority, and I can't think of a better way of ridiculing this than showing Lawrence as an insect on screen.
Lawrence of Arabia gathers an envious cast of actors: a young Peter O'Toole, who dazzled the world with his performance; Omar Sharif, who plays a friend, or the closest thing Lawrence can have to a friend; Anthony Quinn as an Arab tribe leader; Alec Guiness as Prince Feisal; Claude Rains playing a man who represents British interests in Arabia; and Jack Hawkins as the manipulative General Allenby. There are other great roles for Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle and Arthur Kennedy too. I may as well name every actor since I can't think of anyone who was bad in this movie.
The relationships between all these characters have provided some of the finest meditations on human nature and its complexity. There's nothing simple about these men: they're experienced citizens of the world, each one with his private interests that go from nationalism to political power to delusions of grandeur. Nobility, heroism, treason, ruthlessness, friendship are so pure, so serious in this movie that I have to go back to Homer to find an equal treatment of these topics in art. There's none of the self-consciousness that poisons so much modern art in this movie. The characters represent these ideas entirely without hesitation.
Completing the perfection of this movie is Maurice Jarre's unforgettable score, a score so unique when one hears it one immediately knows its source. Jarre composed some of the bests scores for cinema working with David Lean, and Lawrence of Arabia is perhaps his greatest achievement. Like all else in the movie, it's perfection.