This three-hour movie with no female characters at all is a movie without any flaws. Sound and picture, role, psychology, customs, meaning, symbolism, condensed together cannot be dismantled. Lawrence is so innocent and awesome in this cruel world, living with a kind of almost ignorant and fearless ideal, this seems to be an unbeatable idealist. The ideal that drives away everything is as clear as the blazing sun in the desert is the only shadow cast by his existence.
He is the only one who lives without a mask. The reason why his Arab friend Ali did not hesitate during the massacre and did not waver in the same arduous trek was because he was firmly attached to the Harris identity. Allenby was loyal to the British government, and his interests constituted his identity. As an aide, Dai Dan, with a bit of Western nihilistic philosophy, saw clearly how fragile Lawrence’s pursuit of justice in his own mind was, but he still couldn’t understand him.
Because there is no mask, the "who are you" that appeared several times prevented him from answering. He is neither Arab nor English. He only fights for his beliefs. When Bantry asked him what on earth attracted you in the desert, he said that it was very clean.
There is only a pure and huge existence there, and Lawrence is only loyal to this ultimate existence.
However, the blood of his staff, politics, massacres, and wars gradually fell into his fear, and the torture of the Turks made him discover his insignificance collapsed. He has an extremely ordinary, boring, and even humble body. It is this body that determines who he is, not his will that determines his existence. He can't walk on the water by his will, no one can.
He is not a saint, he has no divine power. He was a pale British officer wrapped in a dirty Arabian robe, desperate and scarred.
My favorite scene in three hours was the first time that he changed into the tough and restrained British officer uniform, put on the snow-white Arab robes, and secretly found a quick open space to run like a child and let the wind fill up. Sleeve gown, excited. That image is so pure, joyful because of love, forgetting the cruelty of the world, and living in the present forever.
View more about Lawrence of Arabia reviews
