Your average person has better things to do at 10 a.m. on a bright early autumn Saturday morning than to spend four hours in a dark movie house watching Lawrence of Arabia in a digitally remastered print. But film buffs are not your average people. We buy tickets in advance to make sure we get our favorite seats (sixth row center for me) and we get their early so that we can empty our bladders, find our seats and unpack our backpacks full of cushions, spare eyeglasses (all film buffs wear glasses), film guides and Raisinets. To be honest, though, I wasnt sure whether I would be able to sit through the entire film. My sitter does not like sitting through any movie more than about 90 minutes long. I hadnt seen this epic since it was released when I was 12 years old ... and remember it as being tedious and incredibly long and disappointingly devoid of space aliens, giant mutant radioactive ants or tarantulas ... which were the stars of the movies I liked best at that age. But in fact, this film moves at a surprisingly fast pace ... with a well-written script, stunning photography, superb editing and without CGI gimmickry. Everything is real, everything feels real ... and seeing on the big screen, you can almost feel the sand entering your pores and the sun baking your face. It was meant to be seen on a giant screen, and it was a pleasure and privilege to see it the way it was meant to be seen ... on a 66-foot (20 m) screen at the Savoy Kino Hamburg. Those four hours flashed by quickly, like a camel at full trot, and the soaring music of Maurice Jarre in digitally enhanced Dolby stereo kept the pace going. What I noticed especially was the lack of a boy-meets-girl love story. If they made this film today Lawrence would be accompanied by a couple of young women rather than two teenage boys. Or his Bedouin ally would be played by the admittedly brilliant Michelle Rodriguez rather than Omar Sharif. Instead, this is an all-guy movie. The only love interest is the touching friendship between Daud and Farraj, the adolescents whose loyalty to el Orrence is only exceeded by their devotion to each other ... making their accidental deaths in fealty to Lawrence even more tragically cathartic. Their deaths are the turning point when Lawrence loses his grip on his humanity. As a boy, I saw this movie through the eyes of Daud and Farraj ... I saw it as an adventure story. Going into the movie this morning, I couldnt remember how it ended, because my 12-year-old mind had no way of grasping the outcome. Now, of course, I see that this film is a bittersweet tale of loss of innocence, disillusionment and the futility of thinking that you can change the world all by yourself ... though you CAN make a difference ... but often only at great cost. In a way, we are all wandering in the desert. And when a fellow traveler falls by the wayside, we can turn back and take a big risk. Even if everyone else advises against it, citing rules or conventional ways of thinking ... we can go back and pick up a straggler ... for no other reason than because our fates are not written in stone: https://youtube/watch?v=_EZCG2Ex8Q0
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 16:39:27 +0000
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