Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

I have watched “Lawrence of Arabia” many times, but I have never *seen* it in 70 mm as it’s meant to be adored. That said, my recent TV viewing left me awed again. This epic turned razor sharp history lesson is indeed one of the greatest films ever made. It’s cinematography of endless deserts and massive (pre-CGI) battles involving men on horseback charging trains, and Peter O’Toole as Lawrence standing before the sun remains unmatched. O’Toole is T.E. Lawrence, the Brit cartographer who becomes a war leader, leading hundreds of Arabs (our naïve English term put upon hundreds of tribes, unasked) against the Turkish Empire during World War I. That’s a slice of the story. When director David Lean depicts mad Lawrence leading “his” army into Damascus, only to lose the city to chaos, it plays out as foreshadowing of America in Iraq. Lean goes brilliant as we watch Lawrence “grow” from a speck on the horizon to filling the screen, blotting the desert out in paranoid close-ups. Draw your own conclusions on who this man might be now. I love this film, historical in every way. I hope to see this in a theater one day. A+