This was my first time watching the 1962 historical epic Lawrence of Arabia since I was a kid, and it was well worth the four hours.
For one, it’s simply great art from a lost era when films were actually shot on location. There’s a particular irony in this case because Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom inspired the Dune book series which also recently hit the big screen (which I wrote about here). The scenery and action scenes are more convincing in this 1962 movie than the CGI slop in the 2024 Dune 2. Arabs on camels make for more convincing Fremen, and Turkish soldiers as Harkonen, than all the actual Dune movies.
No great film is without controversy. In this case, Lawrence appears as he was, a masochistic homosexual, and that flies in the face of British “stiff upper lip.” Britain is that strange place with all-boy boarding schools and outwardly toxic masculinity, with the end result of producing many repressed or closeted homosexuals. In hindsight, it is little surprise that British stubborness toward acknowledging homosexuality exists led to an extreme opposite in the modern-day LGBT movement. In the bygone era, gays were oppressed, now everyone must be gay – though this isn’t an improvement on the freedom index.
At the end of the day, I think Peter O’Toole’s depiction of Lawrence is a refreshing break from the traditionally masculine characters. The protagonist does not always need to be a macho ladies’ man like Sean Connery. For a hero’s journey, it is interesting Lawrence unable to fit in the uncompromising and frankly dim-witted military culture. Lawrence can’t snap to attention and shout “Yes saar!” without betraying his sarcasm toward brainless military authoritarianism, so he is naturally disliked. A traditional gentleman with a stiff upper lip will always have a less turbulent military career than a weird homosexual, even if the gentleman repeatedly leads his troops into disasters against Germans, Turks, Russians, Zulus, etc.
Yet Lawrence is an imperfect hero and maybe not a hero at all. His quest for Arab freedom and unity ends in failure. Furthermore, his own moral principles cave under pressure. The massacre of the Turkish column is one of the most dramatic moments in film history because it was the culmination of everything shown, and the contradiction of everything said. Lawrence chided the Arabs for being violent, then gave into blood lust himself and commenced a slaughter that had no military value and wasted valuable time.
The Arab Council in Damascus comes back to Lawrence’s stinging condemnation of Sherif Ali at his well in the opening of the adventure. Lawrence rightly admires the Arabs as a strong, hardy, and cultured people. They have numbers, land, natural resources and geography all working in their favor, everything necessary to become an independent power. But they’re still, as Lawrence put it when he was mad, a small, silly and barbarous people who kill each other. Arabs can’t agree on anything except that they hate each other more than the English.
Lawrence’s downfall and the failure of the Arabs to unify is more pure than the sci-fi spinoff Dune with Paul and Fremen. I think that’s simply because Dune is so much more abstracted and cluttered with other elements. There’s Frank Herbert’s vast geopolitical world building, Paul’s revenge against the Harkonens, and all that stuff. But in Lawrence of Arabia, there’s no clutter. The Arab army turns into a bloodthirsty rabble led by a psychotic faggot. When Paul defeats the Harkonen, he looks cool and heroic. But when Ali finds Lawrence on the battlefield with a crazed look in his eyes and his white robe soaked in blood, there is nothing cool or heroic about him. It’s a great conclusion and role reversal from when Lawrence and Ali first met.
It’s been a little over a hundred years since then, and the Arab unity Lawrence dreamed of still has not arrived yet. Even with the Arab states at their strongest and the western empires at their weakest, there is still no Arab unity. Even with the Israeli Defense Forces a comical farce of their former selves, the Arabs still can’t unify against them. Unfortunately, unity is not something that can be forced from the outside.
Ian Kummer
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Good points, I’d also add the Ukrainians need to see this movie. It shows how Western powers have always been using local conflicts for their own benefit.
Yes, it’s a complex movie.
Not sure if I like it or not.
As far as I know, historically the man was two-faced and never intended to legitimately offer the locals independence (not that he could, the British intelligence services would override him easily enough).