Poll Position: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Last week's poll was given a desert theme, and Lawrence of Arabia won by quite a large margin. This certainly wasn't a small task as it has a run time of over 3 1/2 hours. However, as promised I have come stumbling out of this endless movie just as Lawrence himself comes stumbling out of the desert. What I didn't realize until reading into the movie a bit was that this is actually a real story about a real man. Hit the jump to see if I felt like a king, or if I was about to die of exhaustion.


To put the story simply, Lawrence of Arabia is about a young British military officer in 1916 who is sent out to find out what an Arab Prince ultimately wants or intends to do by the war's end. The British are currently at war with the Turks in Arabia, and have chosen to back certain Arab tribes and groups to fight them back. This British officer is none other than Thomas Edward Lawrence, who goes on to lead the Arabs across deserts and unifies them into one massive army. The story is less about the story of the war, and more about the story of Lawrence who goes from an unknown officer to the man all the Arab tribes look to as some kind of prophet, and ultimately, where his loyalties lie.

The start of this movie instantly had me interested. Almost everything about it I found fascinating. It shows a lot of interesting aspects of life out in the desert and the cinematography is brilliant. Even the simple things like showing how to properly ride a camel and what it's like to be at a desert well had my attention. What could be so interesting about a well? How about that it's in the middle of nowhere, and there is nothing for as far as the eye can seen except sand and mirages? What does it look like to see someone ride out of the distance, seemingly out of thin air? This movie shows you, and it looks great the whole time.

Lawrence finally proves himself

I did have an issue however. While I found the first half of the movie fascinating, the last half of the movie really started to drag for me. By this point in the film the plot as progressed past Lawrence learning about the desert and gaining the trust of the Arab people, and moves into his leading a war against the Turkish armies. This basically consists of him blowing up train tracks in the desert, raiding said trains, and becoming insanely full of himself, to the point it seems he thinks he's some sort of deity. While the first half of the movie is very much an adventure, the second half becomes far more political and more of a drama. Unfortunately it couldn't hold my attention for that, and I primarily think it's for the acting.

Lawrence is played by Peter O'Toole, and while he made an excellent young man out for adventure and always playing around, I had a hard time buying his strange insanity late in the film. It just came across as weird to me and had a slight odor of cheese to it. One character I did quite like was his friend Sherif Ali played by Omar Sharif. I last saw Omar Sharif as the good doctor in Doctor Zhivago. I'm not sure what it is about him, but he's just really good. Lastly, I was a little taken aback to see Obi Wan Kenobi Alec Guinness as the Prince Feisal. I guess when they made movies in the 60's they just used whoever they could get, and in Alec Guinness' case this means they had to cover him in brown paint to make him "look" Arab. Obviously, that doesn't really work. He looked more like a Klingon from the original Star Trek TV show. At least his acting was good.

Oh how the mighty have become full of themselves

In the end, I came out of Lawrence of Arabia with a so-so feeling about it. It sort of feels like two distinct movies glued together right in the middle. If that's the case, I liked the first one, but wasn't much of a fan of the second. The cinematography was consistently amazing throughout the whole movie, especially with all the extras they have filling the vast landscapes, but then acting was hit and miss sometimes for me. I think this would be a good movie to watch if you're studying film and want to cover the classics, but it was so long I don't know if it would make for good casual viewing simply for entertainment. You'll have to make that call for yourself, but you can be sure you'll never see more sand than you will in this movie.