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rambling thoughts about lawrence of arabia
This weekend I got to see Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen, and y'all, it was such a great experience! The theater was almost full and we actually got our intermission and yes, I spent more than four hours in that building, but it was totally worth it imo.
We used to know how to make movies! The cinematography and special effects and production design are just insane--every frame is just swoon-worthy. God, what a good-looking movie. There are many movies that are better in a theater, but this one is one where I'm like, "If you see it on a smaller screen, you aren't really seeing this movie." The long shots of the tiny dot in the distance growing larger and larger through the heat waves coming off the sand! MY GOD! The colors! The huge casts of riders on camel or horses or in tents! The train stuff! The dunes and the escarpments and the echoes! The costumes and the texture of the fabric! The on-location sets! CINEMA!
I get very upset thinking about how huge movie budgets are today and how they all look so fake and slick and uninteresting and the color is bad most of the time and the lighting is bad most of the time and I just don't understand how we've regressed in this medium as much as we have. Also: film will always be superior to digital, I don't care what anyone says.
Anyway, visuals aside, I hadn't seen the movie in like 20 years and I was pleased to find that it's also just a well-done story. Like, there are issues with it! The brownface casting is Not Cool! The white savior of it all is...something else!
But also, it's just such a good movie actually? Everyone's at the top of their game. No offense to Albert Finney, but I am so very glad that O'Toole got cast because I just don't think anyone else could have played that character in such an unnerving way. His scary blue eyes! I'm like, "Yeah, that's a man with ghosts and demons and delusions of grandeur and severe mental health problems who is wavering on the edge of a breakdown at all times but I also get why people are so enamored of him." There's also something striking about O'Toole's gigantic head and narrow little shoulders that add something extra to the whole performance.
OMAR SHARIF! God, I love him in general but specifically in this role. Just top tier. I'd forgotten about Lawrence and Ali's meet-cuteugly with all the insults and the murder. Ali as the conscious of the film is another thing I'd forgotten.
It's very weird being like, "Damn, Anthony Quinn and Jose Ferrer are so good in this, but also they should never have been cast." Like, I don't blame them that much, as Latino men in the early 60s, but lbr it's shameful that Omar Sharif was the only Arab in the main cast. Sir Alec Guiness looks disturbingly like King Faisal, actually, it's bizarre. But brownface is still brownface, and I Do Not Approve. Shout-out to my man Claude Rains, who is always fantastic. Was Quinn nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for this? If he wasn't, he should have been.
It's significantly less racist than it could have been? Which is not to say that it isn't racist, but the Arab characters are all real people with believable motives, and the movie never once questions that they are right and correct to want both the Turks and the Brits out of their country that isn't a country yet.
I also deeply, deeply appreciate the script. It doesn't try to explain to us why Lawrence is Like That. We get one single line about him being illegitimate, but that's it. The why of it all is left up to us as viewers. Was he born that way? Was he dropped on his head as a child? Is all of this coming from daddy issues or the trauma of British boarding school? We will simply never know! Which is as it should be! In a contemporary film, there would be a scene in childhood that ~explains~ the character, and it would piss me off. Here, people are just complicated. Because they are people. It's not a biopic in the way we now understand that genre, or at least it defies all the tropes. It's about a couple of years in the life of one person.
And the psychosexual stuff isn't overdone. It's absolutely 100% there--this is a very gay movie even if the movie doesn't really know it's gay--but it isn't heavy-handed. The scene with Ferrer as the Turkish bey? INSANE. So good.
And yes, there is something extremely problematic about the only significantly English-language film about the Arab Revolt being centered around a white English dude. But also: he was a real person and the movie realizes that he was as bad for the Arab independence movement as he was good for it, which I appreciate.
I would totally understand why a contemporary person would be like, "Between the brownface and the white savior-ing, I do not need this film in my life." That is a very valid and in fact morally superior opinion! However, it's a movie that already exists, not one that's being made now, and there's nothing we can do to change it at this point in time, and it's an incredible bit of filmmaking, so I do deeply appreciate it while also judging it hard for all the ways it should have been better.
Anyway, my opinion is that if you ever get a chance to see this film in the theater, you should take that opportunity because you will leave it thinking, as my dad Paul Simon says, that's why God made the movies.
We used to know how to make movies! The cinematography and special effects and production design are just insane--every frame is just swoon-worthy. God, what a good-looking movie. There are many movies that are better in a theater, but this one is one where I'm like, "If you see it on a smaller screen, you aren't really seeing this movie." The long shots of the tiny dot in the distance growing larger and larger through the heat waves coming off the sand! MY GOD! The colors! The huge casts of riders on camel or horses or in tents! The train stuff! The dunes and the escarpments and the echoes! The costumes and the texture of the fabric! The on-location sets! CINEMA!
I get very upset thinking about how huge movie budgets are today and how they all look so fake and slick and uninteresting and the color is bad most of the time and the lighting is bad most of the time and I just don't understand how we've regressed in this medium as much as we have. Also: film will always be superior to digital, I don't care what anyone says.
Anyway, visuals aside, I hadn't seen the movie in like 20 years and I was pleased to find that it's also just a well-done story. Like, there are issues with it! The brownface casting is Not Cool! The white savior of it all is...something else!
But also, it's just such a good movie actually? Everyone's at the top of their game. No offense to Albert Finney, but I am so very glad that O'Toole got cast because I just don't think anyone else could have played that character in such an unnerving way. His scary blue eyes! I'm like, "Yeah, that's a man with ghosts and demons and delusions of grandeur and severe mental health problems who is wavering on the edge of a breakdown at all times but I also get why people are so enamored of him." There's also something striking about O'Toole's gigantic head and narrow little shoulders that add something extra to the whole performance.
OMAR SHARIF! God, I love him in general but specifically in this role. Just top tier. I'd forgotten about Lawrence and Ali's meet-
It's very weird being like, "Damn, Anthony Quinn and Jose Ferrer are so good in this, but also they should never have been cast." Like, I don't blame them that much, as Latino men in the early 60s, but lbr it's shameful that Omar Sharif was the only Arab in the main cast. Sir Alec Guiness looks disturbingly like King Faisal, actually, it's bizarre. But brownface is still brownface, and I Do Not Approve. Shout-out to my man Claude Rains, who is always fantastic. Was Quinn nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for this? If he wasn't, he should have been.
It's significantly less racist than it could have been? Which is not to say that it isn't racist, but the Arab characters are all real people with believable motives, and the movie never once questions that they are right and correct to want both the Turks and the Brits out of their country that isn't a country yet.
I also deeply, deeply appreciate the script. It doesn't try to explain to us why Lawrence is Like That. We get one single line about him being illegitimate, but that's it. The why of it all is left up to us as viewers. Was he born that way? Was he dropped on his head as a child? Is all of this coming from daddy issues or the trauma of British boarding school? We will simply never know! Which is as it should be! In a contemporary film, there would be a scene in childhood that ~explains~ the character, and it would piss me off. Here, people are just complicated. Because they are people. It's not a biopic in the way we now understand that genre, or at least it defies all the tropes. It's about a couple of years in the life of one person.
And the psychosexual stuff isn't overdone. It's absolutely 100% there--this is a very gay movie even if the movie doesn't really know it's gay--but it isn't heavy-handed. The scene with Ferrer as the Turkish bey? INSANE. So good.
And yes, there is something extremely problematic about the only significantly English-language film about the Arab Revolt being centered around a white English dude. But also: he was a real person and the movie realizes that he was as bad for the Arab independence movement as he was good for it, which I appreciate.
I would totally understand why a contemporary person would be like, "Between the brownface and the white savior-ing, I do not need this film in my life." That is a very valid and in fact morally superior opinion! However, it's a movie that already exists, not one that's being made now, and there's nothing we can do to change it at this point in time, and it's an incredible bit of filmmaking, so I do deeply appreciate it while also judging it hard for all the ways it should have been better.
Anyway, my opinion is that if you ever get a chance to see this film in the theater, you should take that opportunity because you will leave it thinking, as my dad Paul Simon says, that's why God made the movies.