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On Seeing Lawrence of Arabia at Cinerama
May. 1st, 2007 10:32 pmOn Sunday, I finally had the opportunity to see Lawrence of Arabia the way it’s really meant to be seen, in its full 70mm glory, at Seattle’s Cinerama. I already knew the film well enough to recite many lines from memory (“A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.” “With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.” etc.) And I’d always been impressed by the film’s look. But, my God, I just had no idea how how immersive the film’s desert setting is until seeing it up there on that gigantic screen: I felt as small as the figures onscreen looked against that immense landscape, felt the baking heat of “the Sun’s Anvil” during the ride to Aqaba, the dust whirling around Lawrence and his followers as they trudge across Sinai.
I was also struck by how multifaceted the film’s sense of history is: When Prince Feisal confronts Allenby and Dryden about the Sykes-Picot agreement, one can sense the whole sad history of the British and French Mandates about to unfold. When Dryden comments ruefully about “riding the whirlwind”, the film reminds us of what that project would come to. Bentley’s frank desire to draw the U.S. into the war (and his interest in Lawrence as a propaganda tool) forshadows both Washington’s eventual eclipse of London as global superpower, and the burgeoning role of the media in twentieth-century geopolitics. The scene in which Ali announces his desire to take up politics and Auda warns him that “Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!”, seems to anticipate the whole torturous course of Pan-Arabism. And of course the contrast between Lawrence’s national liberation rhetoric and his superiors’ imperial intentions provides the film's most glaringly obvious parallel to contemporary events.
Above all, the movie is blessed by Peter O’Toole’s eccentric, mercurial, tortured T.E. Lawrence. Even if it weren’t for everything else that’s amazing about this picture, even if it were a one-man show on an otherwise empty stage, O’Toole’s performance would be mesmerizing. It’s a staggering crime that the Academy has still never awarded this man a Best Actor Oscar--he richly deserved it, even here in his first major film role, and several times since.
I was also struck by how multifaceted the film’s sense of history is: When Prince Feisal confronts Allenby and Dryden about the Sykes-Picot agreement, one can sense the whole sad history of the British and French Mandates about to unfold. When Dryden comments ruefully about “riding the whirlwind”, the film reminds us of what that project would come to. Bentley’s frank desire to draw the U.S. into the war (and his interest in Lawrence as a propaganda tool) forshadows both Washington’s eventual eclipse of London as global superpower, and the burgeoning role of the media in twentieth-century geopolitics. The scene in which Ali announces his desire to take up politics and Auda warns him that “Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!”, seems to anticipate the whole torturous course of Pan-Arabism. And of course the contrast between Lawrence’s national liberation rhetoric and his superiors’ imperial intentions provides the film's most glaringly obvious parallel to contemporary events.
Above all, the movie is blessed by Peter O’Toole’s eccentric, mercurial, tortured T.E. Lawrence. Even if it weren’t for everything else that’s amazing about this picture, even if it were a one-man show on an otherwise empty stage, O’Toole’s performance would be mesmerizing. It’s a staggering crime that the Academy has still never awarded this man a Best Actor Oscar--he richly deserved it, even here in his first major film role, and several times since.
