More war and deserts! "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)

We watched this over two settings, a Friday and Saturday night because this is a long one! A very long one and it's a bit of a trend we're noticing in the best picture winners already. Whatever happened to being concise?!!

Again this movie introduced us to a time and place and a person so different to what we see and hear in our everyday lives. But it holds a special resonance because from the period it was set (early 20th century) to when it was made (1962) to today, everything and nothing has changed in the Middle East.

This is not a political blog though!

So, as for the movie, it was visually spectacular, well acted and scripted with some really punchy dialogue. “Your mother must have mated with a scorpion” will remain a favourite insult at our place for some time to come! It’s amazing to think how much faith they must have had in Peter O’Toole (and how much pressure he must have felt) to carry such a monstrous movie. It was a long, painful movie to make and I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare continuity must have been. In one scene, as Lawrence starts walking down the stairs he is one whole year younger than when he is filmed walking away from the staircase. But the editors have done a great job and you really would never know that much time had passed.

They really aren’t kidding when they describe Lawrence as ‘epic’ and like “Patton”, you know it’s not CGI. Those people are really on those camels and they’re really in the middle of a big bloody desert! I’ll never complain about sand on the beach again! Peter O’Toole was apparently nearly trampled to death in a sequence where they’re charging a fort and the only way he could get back on a camel was for Omar Shariff to get him blind drunk – explains a lot, doesn’t it?

There’s a lot of controversy over how accurate a portrayal this is of T.E. Lawrence, his brother stated he didn’t recognise the person they portrayed in the film. But then I wondered how well my sisters would recognise me in a story of my life! We don’t tell our siblings everything!

Overall though it paints a really clear picture of one man’s struggle to keep his sanity in the midst of total insanity and the effect it has on him and the person he wanted to be. Some of the acting is a bit overwrought, we blamed that on the 1960s, but overall it’s a must-see movie that Mat scored 85/100 and I gave 83/100.