multi Oscar winning epic

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2004)

Superlative multi-Oscar winning biography of T E Lawrence (played by Peter O'Toole), the Oxford-educated lieutenant, who united Arab tribes against the Ottoman Turks in WW1
The idea of Lawrence (O'Toole) as a wilfully self-destructive character is established in the credit sequence which presents his death in a motor-bike crash as something close to suicide. We flash back to Lawrence as a young, energetic, slightly mad man stuck in a job as a military cartographer, desperate to put his knowledge of and passion for all things Arabian to practical use. Then in a breathtaking cut we move from a lit match to the sun burning over the film's real star, the Arabian desert. Lean and cinematographer Young clearly fell for the desert as much as Lawrence himself, and they ensure that the audience shares their love.

The film strips down the story to its basics, following the struggle of the unhinged anti-hero to help establish a united Arab nation. O'Toole is wonderfully intense in the lead, but his characterization of a man of unfathomable motivations gets lost in the grandeur of his surroundings - the vast, exquisitely composed desertscapes and breathtaking battle scenes. Sharif is served better by a more conventional role and, emerging like a shimmering mirage on the horizon and slowly approaching the camera, is given one of cinema's great first appearances.