Cover via Amazon

Lawrence of Arabia

1962, from television

You should know

For some time, I've been wanting to view the AFI's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.  It recently occurred to me that, since we have a TiVo, all I have to do is plug the names of the movies in, and every few days a new film will be waiting for me.  Nice.

So?

This movie is a dramatization of part of the life of D. H. Lawrence.  I want to say it was fascinating and full of drama.  Parts of it were.

Basically, Lawrence, a British officer, takes it on himself to work with the local Arab population where he is stationed.  He takes on their dress and some of their habits -- and, of course, their cause -- and becomes a local hero.  The British don’t want to take him seriously, but his unorthodox methods eventually make him the only man for the job when the British and Arabs need to broker agreements.

But, as an epic of its time, the movie was full of panoramic shots of sandy desert dunes or colorful camps.  Lovely cinematography, but in every case, after a minute or two of it, I would get distracted -- and the next thing I know, there’s important dialogue happening that I can barely follow.  So that didn’t help.