My "Top Posts" highlights continue in anticipation of my 5th anniversary this July. Each day I will be posting an intro with a link to one of the pieces I consider my best. Today's review covers "Lawrence of Arabia", one of my favorite films of all time, not only an celebrated landscape picture but also an underrated character study.
As always, please don't link to or attempt to comment on this intro page, which is a temporary bump and will be deleted when a new "Top Post" is featured tomorrow. You can link to, comment on, or recommend the original post.
Yesterday's Top Post, if you missed it, covered the second 60 of my favorite movie characters. Also, yesterday I posted my reading diary - covers and quotes from the last 20 books I read.
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Lawrence of Arabia, 1962, directed by David Lean
The Story: T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), a minor British officer stationed in Cairo during World War I, is sent into the Arabian desert to “assess” the state of the Arabs’ revolt against the Turks. The revolt is a mess, but instead of reporting back, Lawrence himself leads a band of Arabs through the harshest sectors of the desert into victory against the Turks. Astonished and delighted, his superiors give him free reign and so T.E. becomes “Lawrence of Arabia,” an enigmatic, brilliant, and narcissistic guerrilla leader whose genius and bravado is matched only by his eccentricity and insecurity.
The Story: T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), a minor British officer stationed in Cairo during World War I, is sent into the Arabian desert to “assess” the state of the Arabs’ revolt against the Turks. The revolt is a mess, but instead of reporting back, Lawrence himself leads a band of Arabs through the harshest sectors of the desert into victory against the Turks. Astonished and delighted, his superiors give him free reign and so T.E. becomes “Lawrence of Arabia,” an enigmatic, brilliant, and narcissistic guerrilla leader whose genius and bravado is matched only by his eccentricity and insecurity.