Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is in my opinion the greatest movie ever made. It is one of the films that Steven Spielberg always watches before he starts directing a new movie. But that has nothing to do with why I love it; I merely find that fact interesting. It is the desert that makes Lawrence great.
The beauty of the desert, in its profound and all consuming glory streches accross David Lean's 70mm canvass, and so dominates the screen that even though the pace of the film is often slow, one can never look away. Every charcter in the movie must struggle through its clean, hot nothingness. In so doing they are often able to achieve some sort of fulfillment. For Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn) there is the promise of "something honorable," i.e. some form of material wealth that appeals to his sense of what a tribal chief should have. For Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), Lawrence's closest friend, there is the chance to learn more from his teacher, and to help lead his people to something better. For the British (Claude Raines plays the charming, two-faced, cunning politician Mr. Dryden perfectly) there is victory, wealth, land, and influence to be won by the Arab's success under Lawrence. (The British had allied themselves with the Arabs in World War I against the Turks, who controlled much of the Arab's territory at that point. But with the signing of the Sykes-Pico Agreement with France, Britain agreed to share the old Turkish empire with the French. Basically the Arabs were throwing off the bonds of one master, the Turks, by fighting under Lawrence, only to fall under the control of another foriegn master.) Lawrence himself seems to be looking to be the savior of the Arabs. He promises throughout the film that he is going to give the Arabs their own homeland with their own government. He attemps to be a messiah: crossing the Sinai like Moses, pretending to walk on water like Jesus. But in the end fails because of forces well beyond his control. He likes the desert "because it is clean," but finds in it all the smalless and hatred that exist in the rest of the world. But Lawrence did attempt to challenge the limits of possible, to do what everyone else thought couldn't be done, and in so doing he became known throughout the ages. That is the message of the film, as large a message as could ever be laid on canvass.
But that is still not why I love it. I love it because when I am done watching it I feel like I have been meditating for the past three hours, and am left utterly at peace. There is something about this film, more than anyother, that makes me feel as though I have been staring at the beauty of life while watching it. When Anthony Quinn (Auda) says, "But I am poor, because I am a river to my people!" and his entire tribe erupts with a torrent of affirmation, a shiver runs down my spine every time. There is so much energy in that statement that it seems to radiate off the screne. I have seen so many films and nothing comes close to giving me that sort of visceral experience. There are others that I love, but none that I enjoy more.