Review of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by Ahmedaiman1999 — 21 Feb 2019

000First and foremost, this movie has way more humor than I ever thought it would have. From its very beginning, I was quite surprised by the amount of humor I found, not only because I didn't expect so, but also because it often works pretty well!

Another great surprise I had watching this movie is that I didn't find it boring at all despite its nearly four-hours runtime. A long runtime alone doesn't make a movie bad or weak, but it certainly doesn't help. But I really think there is almost no second that David Lean has wasted in this textbook example of epic cinema. It's quite entertaining for plenty of reasons; two of them are the fascinating cinematography that treated my eyes with some of the most jaw-dropping images I've ever seen been captured on film, and the mind-bogglingly masterful editing that is easily also one of the best I've ever seen in film.

Lawrence of Arabia is also surprisingly very simple despite its fiendishly complex portrait of the titular character. Actually it may be sometimes too simple for its own good, for I think the movie became superficial and shallow at the beginning of its second half for the sake of nothing but developing the character of Lawrence. There are some key events that should have been more focused on, but ended up being demonstrated comparatively quite fast and superficially. That made the second half a bit muddled, unlike the unbelievably perfect first half, but this wasn't much of an issue for me; because David Lean really make up for this simplicity by delivering a disturbing, terrifying, opulent, astute and utterly unique psychological profile of a heroic, yet flawed historical figure that is the protagonist, Lawrence. As for Peter O'Toole's performance, the only thing I could say is that I was quite mad for about the first half of the movie because how inaccurately serious-looking he appeared on the poster of the movie despite the fact he was rather good-natured, and looked quite charming. Of course, I realized that I was embarrassingly wrong when O'Toole gradually changed 100 percent to a very serious, and even seemingly mad man who struggles to find a balance in his life,nay, to discover his identity.

I also want to say that I'm so so proud of Omar Sharif, who brought one of the most iconic secondary characters in the history of cinema! Alec Guinness was also terrific as Prince Faisal, although I still think he delivered his best performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai, another epic from Lean. Auda Abu Tayi is one of the most blatantly greedy characters I've seen in film, and it could have never been portrayed so convincingly by other than the great actor, Anthony Quinn.