Movie Review:LAWRENCE OF ARABIA -- by naudy (6)

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, also known as The Longest Film About A Closet Homosexual --- EVER!!!, is 227 minutes of pure 1962 showmanship. It also has an overture, an entre'act, and an intermission -- all lushly orchestrated and played for us over a blank screen so we listen and not look. So, while I am terribly horribly familiar now with the score from LOA, and I know exactly how panoramic the Super 70 panoramic film is, I still don't know much about Mr. Lawrence's motivations, exactly why the British are such jerks, and if the Bedouin are noble descendants of a historic culture or barbaric goat-stealers. All of that pesky character development and motivation stuff is left out in favor of another cool shot/costume/orchestra sting/battle scene filmed from 2 miles away. After that all you have time for is a heavily eyelined Peter O'Toole making sure he looks like a matinee idol, a bunch of mustached British officers who would be a tidy kick-line for the Villiage People, and some characatures of non-whites. No women ever speak in this film. In fact, all the women you see are immersed in veils, (though there is one incidence of wrist exposure.)

Here's the story:

Poncy British officer named Lawrence sits around flirting with everyone while painting. Lawrence gets sent off to the middle of Araby where he proceeds to flirt with his guide. Then, in a fit of desert foreplay, guide is killed by a Man In Black. Lawrence is upset. Lawrence meets his commanding officer and is told to stop flirting with the boy toys who chase him. Lawrence meets the Prince and flirts with him. Prince, not being stuipd, flirts back and sets up impossible task for Lawrence to perform as a sign of love. Lawrence and two Arab boy toys go to the desert for two days. Lawrence then challenges Man In Black to see who can complete the impossible task and thus win the Prince's love. They all head out to cross the uncrossable desert where Lawrence gets permanent boy toys and saves another man's life. Man In Black starts to think Lawrence is pretty sexy so he burns those horrible British togs and gives Lawrence a fluttery white dress. Lawrence is dancing around in his lovely new clothes when a Bandit King shows up and threatens to kill everyone. Lawrence offers to let the King take him and all of his men to dinner so the Bandit King says okay and takes them home to his remarkably Native-American-sounding pack of boys. Everyone eats, yells a lot more, and then decide to take over a city the next day. City taken, Lawrence and his two Boy Toys leave to go tell the British so they can have supplies and money and stuff. On the way one Boy Toy dies. Lawrence shows up in Jerusalem with remaining Boy Toy and gets everything he wants from the British, which includes 200 mustached officers thinking he looks pretty great in that fluttery white number.

Months later, Lawrence is nominal head of the "Arab army" who are getting tired of this gay white guy. Man In Black, who's still in love with Lawrence, wants Golden Boy to stop being stupid and to let everyone go home. (In a side note, Boy Toy #2 blows his own backside off and Lawrence has to put him down w/ a bullet to the head.) Lawrence, who thinks pretty = invincible, goes to a Turkish city. There he is captured and molested by a Turkish general. Lawrence dosn't want to admit he likes it so he hits the general who then has Lawrence beaten for being an idiot. Lawrence is picked up out of the mud by Man In Black who all of this time has just wanted Larry to love him. Lawrence, afraid of his feelings for Man In Black, decides he's not actually Arab and goes back to the British. When he discovers none of the mustached officers want him now that he's not in his pretty white dresses, he goes back to the Arabs to lead them to victory and show those stupid Turks he's not gay. On the road to Damascus Lawrence kills about 200 Turks and so showed them. Man In Black is heartbroken because he now knows Lawrence is way too messed up to ever love him. Lawrence takes over Damascus, expects all the Arabs to suddenly become British, is depressed when none of the Arabs remain impressed by his lovely white clothes, and is sent home by the British and the Prince (remember him?) 'cause he's gone crazy. Lawrence then drives recklessly on a motorcyle in England and kills himself because he finally understands that his racist attitudes kept him from his one true love, the Man In Black.

See? It's a long movie.

There are some folks out there who say that "kids today don't know good movies." I do know good movies. And if someone is going to make an epic film of 227 minutes, there had better be more going on than someone staring at the desert for two hours since we've all just learned that pretty white dresses are never enough.