Counter-Currents
4,270 words
David Lean (1908–1991) directed sixteen movies, fully half of them classics, including three of the greatest films ever made: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and, greatest of them all, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Lawrence of Arabia is repeatedly ranked as one of the finest films of all time, and when one compares it to such overpraised items as Citizen Kane and Casablanca, a strong case can be made for putting it at the very top of the list. I am hesitant to speak of “the greatest” anything, just because I have not seen everything. But when I think of some of my personal favorites — Vertigo, Network, Rashomon — I can’t honestly rank any of them higher than Lawrence of Arabia.
Everything about this film is epic: from its nearly four-hour running time and its 70-millimeter widescreen image with astonishing detail and depth of focus — to the magnificent settings in Jordan, Morocco, and Spain — to the music by Maurice Jarré — to the cast of thousands crowned by such stars as Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, José Ferrer, and Claude Rains.
Lean had to go big, simply to do justice to the story. Lawrence of Arabia is about one of the most remarkable men of the last century, Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888–1935) and his role in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
Based on Lawrence’s sprawling narrative of the revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the script by Robert Bolt (A Man for All Seasons, Doctor Zhivago) and Michael Wilson (The Bridge on the River Kwai) is a supremely masterful screen adaptation. The timeline is simplified, and certain characters are amalgamated, both to save time and heighten dramatic conflicts, but the truth of the story is conveyed.
Like Lawrence’s book, the movie has several layers. First of all, it is a historical narrative. Second, it offers lessons in political philosophy. (The word “wisdom” in the title should have been a warning.) Lawrence was a nationalist, not an imperialist. To fight the Turks, he favored aiding Arab nationalists rather than spending British lives to conquer territory and resources in Mesopotamia. But, against Lawrence’s own intention, Seven Pillars also makes a case for empire, a case that Lean’s film clearly reinforces. Third, there is a strong element of Nietzschean self-mythologization: what Aleister Crowley calls “auto-hagiography” and the Arabs call “blasphemy.”
On the symbolic plane, Lawrence overthrows the three Abrahamic faiths by rejecting their doctrines and reversing or rewriting their central stories with himself as the hero. The movie takes this process further, both reflecting upon the process by which Lawrence became a legend and perfecting it: cinema as apotheosis. I want to focus on the latter two layers. Thus I will skip huge stretches of the story and leave those for you to discover on your own.
T. E. Lawrence was one of five illegitimate sons of an Anglo-Irish Baronet, Sir Thomas Chapman, and an English mother, Sarah Junner. Highly intelligent, Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford from 1907 to 1910. From 1910 to 1914, he was an archaeologist in the Holy Land, working with such eminent figures as Leonard Woolley and Flinders Petrie. Woolley and Lawrence also gathered intelligence for the British in the Negev Desert in early 1914.
When the World War broke out, Lawrence enlisted. Fluent in French and Arabic and knowledgeable of Arab history and culture, he received a military intelligence post in Cairo. In June of 1916, when Sharif Hussein, Emir of Mecca, led an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, Lawrence was sent to Arabia to gather intelligence. The rest is history.
The movie begins with Lawrence’s death in a motorcycle accident in 1935, at the age of 46. After a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral attended by the crème of the British establishment, a priest asks if Lawrence “really belongs here,” which introduces the theme of Lawrence as an outsider. The first half of the movie can be seen as an affirmative answer to that question.
Then we flash back nearly twenty years to Lawrence in Cairo. From the start, Peter O’Toole plays Lawrence as slightly autistic and ambiguously gay. He also has a masochistic side. He likes to extinguish matches with his fingers. “The trick . . . is not minding if it hurts.” It is a small exercise in self-overcoming, a hint of greater things to come.
Lawrence’s commander, General Murray, despises him as an overeducated misfit, but a civil servant Mr. Dryden (a composite character played by Claude Rains) values his intelligence and language skills. Dryden “borrows” Lawrence for an intelligence gathering mission to Arabia. He is to meet Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness), the son of Sharif Hussein, and evaluate his leadership potential.
Lawrence tells Dryden that he thinks this mission will be “fun.” Dryden says that the only people who find the desert fun are Bedouin and gods. His unstated premise is that Lawrence is neither. Lawrence flatly declares, “No, it will be fun.” If Dryden is right, and Lawrence is not a Bedouin, that implies that Lawrence thinks of himself as a god. To underscore Lawrence’s funny idea of fun, he lights a match. But this time Lawrence blows the flame out.
Crossing the desert to find Faisal, Lawrence’s guide Tafas is killed by Sharif Ali (Omar Sharif) for drinking at his well. You see, Tafas is from the wrong tribe. This prompts a bit of political philosophy delivered with autistic frankness that borders on the suicidal, given that it is spoken to a man holding a smoking gun: “As long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, they will be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel.” A nation comes into being when tribes of the same people put aside petty differences and rivalries and embrace a common government, including the rule of law, for a higher good. Throughout his adventures in Arabia, Lawrence’s dream of a rising Arab nation is stymied by tribal rivalries and blood feuds.
On autistic principle, Lawrence rejects Ali’s help in finding Faisal, preferring to risk it on his own.
When Lieutenant Lawrence reaches Faisal, he is ordered by his British military advisor, Colonel Brighton, to say nothing, observe, and report back to Dryden. But Lawrence is irrepressible. As an autist, when he has ideas, he can’t keep them to himself, which intrigues Faisal. Brighton counsels a strategic withdrawal to Yenbo, where the British can resupply him. Faisal wants the British fleet to take the port of Aqaba, but Brighton refuses. It is too well-defended. When Brighton leaves, Faisal bids Lawrence to stay. Faisal naturally fears the English have designs on Arabia, but he is forced to depend upon them: “We need the English or — what no man can provide, Mr. Lawrence — we need a miracle.”
This prompts Lawrence to spend a night brooding in the desert. The next morning, Lawrence suggests to Ali that the Arabs should take Aqaba themselves. Aqaba’s guns point toward the sea, because an attack from the land was deemed unlikely. Ali points out that such an attack would require crossing the Nefud Desert, a waste that even the Bedouin avoid. Lawrence proposes crossing the Nefud with fifty men — all members of Ali’s tribe — then raising more troops from the Howeitat tribe on the other side. Ali agrees.
When Lawrence tells Prince Faisal that he is “going to work your miracle,” Faisal replies “Blasphemy is a bad beginning.” Lean films Lawrence’s nocturnal meditations as something more than just a brainstorming session. Now we know that it was a step toward apotheosis.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Part Four of the Trilogy here.
As Lawrence and his followers make their last push across the Nefud, one of the men, named Gasim, falls off his camel in the dark. When his riderless camel is noticed, Lawrence wants to go back to rescue him. But Ali and the Arabs say they dare not risk it. Gasim’s time has come. “It is written,” meaning that it is the will of God. Lawrence declares “Nothing is written” — meaning that the will of God is nothing in the face of the will of man — then he goes back on his own to search for Gasim. As he departs, Ali rages at Lawrence’s “blasphemous conceit” and says he will not be at Aqaba. Lawrence replies that he will make it to Aqaba: “That is written” — by Lawrence himself.
In the space of a single conversation, Lawrence rejects the written laws handed down by Moses and Muhammad. He overthrows God and lays down his own laws. Blasphemy indeed. But Lawrence’s blasphemy is not punished. It is rewarded. When he rescues Gasim, the Arabs begin to idolize Lawrence. As Lawrence sleeps, Ali burns his uniform.
The next day, they dress him in the white and gold robes of a sharif of their tribe, conferring noble status on him. It is proclaimed, “He for whom nothing is written may write himself a clan.” Because Lawrence is a bastard in England, he cannot inherit his father’s name or title. For Ali, that means he is free to choose his own name. He is free to found his own family, clan, or dynasty. He is free to be somebody’s ancestor, not somebody’s heir. This is the privilege that descends on all men who bring victory in battle. It is how aristocracies everywhere are born. The Arabs call him “Aurens.” Now Ali wishes to style him “El Aurens,” which is the equivalent of the German “von.” Lawrence is beginning to enter — and alter — Arab society.
The night before Lawrence’s men and the Howeitat are to strike Aqaba, a shot rings out. One of the Howeitat lies dead, killed by one of Lawrence’s men. The Howeitat demand justice, but if they execute the killer, his own tribesmen are bound to avenge him. Tit-for-tat violence will destroy the alliance. Arab tribalism is about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
But Lawrence has a solution. He will execute the prisoner. He will take the blame. He, not the Howeitat, will bear the brunt of the blood feud of the dead man’s tribe. Thus the alliance of the two tribes can be maintained for the attack on Aqaba. Lawrence is offering himself as a scapegoat to prevent tribal conflict from spinning out of control.
Of course, in a sense Lawrence can’t really serve as a scapegoat, because he knows that he is no danger of actually being punished by Gasim’s tribe for executing him. He has already been hailed as a sharif by Gasim’s own kin.
The scapegoat here functions as a symbol of the political enemy in Carl Schmitt’s sense. If the Arab tribes are to become an Arab nation, they must find a way to take the enmity between them and place it on an outsider. If the Arabs are to become a political “us” they must have an external enemy, a political “them” against whom to define themselves. Lawrence wants it to be the Turks, but he knows that a people in need can create an enemy in its own midst, then externalize it. Lawrence is willing to fill that role in a pinch.
Ironically, though, Lawrence’s gesture also undermines nationalism and makes a case for empire. In Xenophon’s The Education of Cyrus, book 3, we learn of how enemy tribes can be unified not by a common enemy but by a common “friend.” Two enemy peoples in the Caucasus, the Armenians and the “Chaldeans,” are locked in perpetual warfare. Neither group is strong enough to defeat the other, so their costly conflict can only be terminated by a third party.
Cyrus occupies and fortifies the highlands between the Armenians and Chaldeans. He pacifies them by offering to ally himself to whichever tribe is wronged by the other. Then he delivers the fruits of peace by brokering mutually enriching economic exchanges between the two tribes in place of mutually impoverishing conflict.
None of this would be possible without a third power, an outsider who is above their conflicts and benevolently disposed toward them. This was the legitimating ideology of the Persian empire; hence Cyrus became known as the “prince of peace.” Lawrence plays the same role in brokering peace between the tribes. It is, of course, but a small step from hero to emperor. Contrary to the principle of national self-determination, sometimes only an outsider will do.
When Lawrence and the rest of us see the face of the condemned man, it is a punch in the gut. It is Gasim, the man Lawrence risked everything to save. Lawrence asks Gasim if he is guilty. “Yes.” Then Lawrence puts six bullets in him. When he flings away his gun in disgust, a mob converges on it, as a holy relic. Lawrence is becoming a legend. (In reality, Lawrence executed a different man. By making Gasim the killer, the screenwriters not only made the story more economical, they also increased its dramatic power.)
After Aqaba is taken, Lawrence basks in victory for a few moments by the seaside, where Ali throws him a garland of flowers, stating “The miracle is accomplished. . . . Tribute for the prince, flowers for the man.” Lawrence replies “I’m none of those things, Ali.” When asked what he is then, Lawrence says, “Don’t know.” But he’s being coy. If he has worked a miracle, he’s a god, or on his way to becoming one.
When the telegraph equipment in Aqaba is smashed by the excitable Arabs, Lawrence proposes taking the news to Cairo by crossing the Sinai desert. “Why not? Moses did it.” To which Auda abu Tayi, the leader of the Howeitat (Anthony Quinn in his most compelling role) replies, “Moses was a prophet and beloved of God.” But Lawrence is doing more than imitating Moses. He’s already tossed away the written laws of Moses and Muhammad. Now he’s reversing Moses’ journey by going back into Egypt.
When Lawrence arrives in Cairo, he’s dressed in Bedouin robes and caked with filth. But Lawrence walks into military HQ like he belongs there. He was an outsider even when he wore the uniform, but now it’s obvious. Naturally, he is not welcomed until he is recognized as one of their own. He looks like a beggar. He has gone through hell. But when he reports that he has taken Aqaba, everyone from the top brass to the lowest guardsman knows a good thing when he sees it.
General Murry has been replaced by General Allenby, a far shrewder leader superbly played by Jack Hawkins. Allenby promotes Lawrence to major on the spot. Brighton declares it a “brilliant bit of soldiering” and recommends Lawrence be put up for a commendation. Dryden says, “Before he did it, sir, I would say it couldn’t be done.” When Allenby summons the lowly Mr. Perkins into his office and asks his opinion of Aqaba, he says “Bloody marvelous, sir.” We know Perkins is a lowly fellow because we only see his boots, stamping to attention as he enters and leaves.
Allenby proposes a drink at the officers’ bar. The beautifully filmed and choreographed sequence is one of the movie’s most memorable. The British HQ was filmed in a magnificent palace in Spain. The music is a splendid march. Allenby, Lawrence, and company sweep through the halls and down the grand staircase — past rank after rank of smartly uniformed officers and sentries, standing at attention and saluting — into the sumptuous bar, where all the officers spring to attention until Allenby put them at ease and begs their permission to drink there, as a guest of Major Lawrence. It is a perfect image of how hierarchy is oiled by magnanimity, manners, and good humor. We pretty much know where David Lean stands on the empire vs. nationalism question. The British Empire has seldom seemed better oiled and more glamorous on screen.
But it is precisely the British ability to look past appearances and to recognize the talents and achievements of an outsider and misfit like Lawrence that made this victory possible. As Allenby and Lawrence continue their conversation in the courtyard, the camera follows Lawrence’s eyes to the galleries above, which are lined with onlookers. Again, we see a legend forming. When Allenby takes his leave and Lawrence returns alone to the bar, the officers briefly stand silent then burst out in acclaim. When the priest at Saint Paul’s asks, “Does he really belong here?” he means at the very center of one of the world’s great empires. Here we see that the answer is yes. It is an enormously moving climax, and we’re only at the Intermission.
In the first half of the movie, Lawrence makes himself a legend in service of Arab nationalism. In the second half, he meets a rival myth-maker, Jackson Bentley, a fictional American journalist based on Lowell Thomas and played by Arthur Kennedy. Bentley’s goal is to use the Arab anti-colonial revolt and the romantic figure of Lawrence to build American sympathy for the war. Prince Faisal replies: “You are looking for a figure who will draw your country toward war. Aurens is your man.” Amusingly, Bentley tells Faisal, “I just want to tell your story.” The bastards still say the same thing today.
When Lawrence and the Arabs attack a Turkish train, we see apotheosis in action. A victorious Lawrence stands on top of the train to receive the acclaim of the tribes. A wounded Turk shoots him. Lawrence falls to the sand, where he takes stock of his wound. When a bloodied Lawrence returns to the roof, the tribes are ecstatic. Lawrence prances on the roof of the train like a model on a catwalk, whirling in his robes, drinking up the adulation of his followers.
Looking down through the camera’s eyes, we see only Lawrence’s shadow across the sands and the cheering crowd. Looking up, we see only his silhouette against the sky. Bentley eagerly snaps pictures, which the Arabs correctly believe will steal their virtue. Bentley is stealing — and selling, and exploiting — Lawrence’s virtue, his power.
The juxtaposition of the three-dimensional Lawrence and his two-dimensional shadow and silhouette, along with the journalist’s camera, is a subtle commentary on myth-making. Lawrence is becoming one of the shadows projected on the walls of the cave of public opinion.
In my review of John Ford’s The Searchers, I comment on Ford’s framing effect of moving from silhouette to three-D and back to suggest that the domestic world is less real and more fragile than nature, again an analogue to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Lean uses the same contrasts to similar effect. Lean carefully studied The Searchers before filming Lawrence to understand how Ford shot his spectacular Monument Valley settings. He may have taken other inspiration as well.
Sated with loot and desiring to take the winter off, Lawrence’s Bedouin allies melt away. But the British campaign rolls on. Lawrence has been asked to besiege Deraa, but he only has fifty men left, the original number he set out with toward Aqaba. Having worked a miracle once before, he presses on. “Who will walk on water with me?” he asks. More blasphemy. But not even Lawrence can motivate fifty men to take a town garrisoned by thousands of Turks.
So Lawrence proposes to go into Deraa alone. Of course with his fair complexion, golden hair, and blue eyes, he’s going to have a hard time passing, but for some reason Lawrence wants to draw attention to himself — even though he is the most wanted man in the Empire, with a bounty of twenty-thousand pounds. The whole mission makes no sense, and some suspect that it is wholly fictional. Only Ali accompanies him.
Lawrence is arrested, beaten, and most probably raped by a sadistic Turkish general, then thrown into the street. Lawrence’s feeling of invincibility is shattered. He wants to return home and bury himself in an ordinary life. “I’m only a man.” Ali is incredulous, objecting “A man can do whatever he wants!” Lawrence retorts, “But he can’t want what he wants.” Meaning that we may be able to reshape the world according to our desires, but we can’t reshape our desires. Then he pinches his white flesh and says, “This is the stuff that decides what he wants.” Is he referring to his race, which made it impossible for him to pass as an Arab? Is he referring to his sexuality? (Lawrence was most definitely a masochist and probably homosexual.) Whatever his meaning, Lawrence is doubting his outsider magic.
Lawrence meets with Allenby in Jerusalem and asks to be relieved. “I’m an ordinary man, and I want an ordinary job. . . . I just want my ration of common humanity.” Allenby has seen these mood swings before and handles Lawrence shrewdly. “You’re the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met.” Lawrence agrees rather too readily. “Not many people have a destiny, Lawrence. It is a terrible thing for a man to funk it if he has.”
This is Lawrence’s Garden of Gethsemane moment, when he seeks to renounce or flee his superhuman destiny. But that proves impossible. It is not long before the old Lawrence is back. He is going to deliver Damascus to the Arabs. The scene ends dramatically with Lawrence standing in front of a painting of Phaeton falling headlong from the solar chariot declaring emphatically that the Arab tribes “will come for me.”
You can buy Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies here
Of course, at Deraa he’s learned the limits of his charisma. So he demands a great deal of money from Allenby as well, to buy allegiance. When Lawrence sets out for Damascus, he has a paid bodyguard of notorious cutthroats, all of them wanted men.
Lawrence’s goal is to beat Allenby to Damascus and install an Arab National Council. He almost loses the race when he comes across an Arab village sickeningly massacred by the retreating Turks. The cutthroats urge “no prisoners.” Ali reminds Lawrence of Damascus. When one of Lawrence’s men charges the Turks and is gunned down, Lawrence unleashes a massacre. This is his Phaeton-like fall. Faisal prophesied it earlier in the film when he said that for Lawrence, mercy is a passion. For Faisal, it is merely good policy. “You may judge which is more reliable.” Clearly, Faisal’s motive was more reliable in the end.
Despite the massacre, Lawrence beats Allenby to Damascus, occupies key facilities, and declares an Arab National Council in charge. Allenby’s response is shrewd. He orders the British army to quarters, including the medical and technical staff. He’s going to let the Arabs muck things up, out of tribal pettiness and general backwardness. Eventually, they will get tired of playing at government and leave. Which is pretty much what happens. “Marvelous looking beggars, aren’t they?” Allenby remarks as he sees the Bedouin begin to slip back to the desert.
The movie ends with Lawrence, now a full colonel, being sent home so the politicians can take over. Along the road, he passes a troop of Bedouins leaving Damascus and more British coming in. It looks anticlimactic, but that’s history.
It also looks like a defeat, but it wasn’t entirely. Prince Faisal held on. He was willing to accept British engineers to run things, but he insisted on flying an Arab flag and declaring himself king. Faisal was eventually run out of Damascus by the French, but he became king of Iraq, which was pretty much a British oilfield with an Arab flag until his grandson was machine-gunned by revolutionaries. His brother became king of Jordan, where his descendants rule to this day. It wasn’t what Lawrence wanted, but without his efforts, the Arabs would have had to settle for a lot less. Lawrence’s sense of mission wavered from time to time, but he didn’t fail the Arabs. Ultimately, they failed themselves.
Visually, Lawrence of Arabia is one of the most beautiful films in the history of cinema. It has been studied obsessively by other filmmakers but never equaled. Every new viewing discloses new influences. (For instance, surely Faisal’s silent, red-robed guardians gave George Lucas an idea or two.) If a picture is worth a thousand words, Lawrence of Arabia is worth a million. Better, then, that you see it for yourself.
What did Lawrence do after Arabia? There were stints at the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office. But having made history, he found office work boring. So he turned his talents to making legend, writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom and delivering lectures to enormous audiences. He also filled his ration of common humanity by joining the Royal Air Force. Apparently he found it relaxing to take orders from fools. When his enlistment was up, Lawrence left the RAF in March of 1935. He had his fatal accident before he could begin the next chapter in his legend.
We can only imagine what Lawrence would have thought of Lean’s film. I think it is insightful, but it isn’t necessarily pleasant to be spiritually X-rayed. However, if Lean is right about Lawrence’s ambitions, I think he would have been pleased to see his apotheosis finally made complete.
The Unz Review, June 1, 2021
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16 comments
Great review. If we lived in a decent country this would appear in a mainstream publication. There is something odd about the encounter between Englishmen and the barbarous Other. I was thinking also of Heart of Darkness. They seem to “go native,” but, of course, can’t pull it off. The exchange that features “He can’t want what he wants” is a memorable free will-issue moment. I always took the skin pinch as indicating his white racial identity.
I enjoyed the thorough review and the author’s obvious delight with the film. I remember all the solid actors…where are they now? A story of a conflicted, thoughtful hero.
Also, Lawrence wasn’t that fond of Jews and was opposed to a Zionist state.
Also the spectacle. Sixties movies were full of this, recalling a childhood when our family would put on our Sunday best, drive to St. Louis, see THE MOVIE, then eat out and go home. The movies were fun but since they were epics, a bit long and tiring for me at times. I remember Lawrence of Arabia…sand, sand, sand. Dr. Zhivago…snow, snow, snow. Funny Girl…Streisand, Streisand, Streisand.
One interpretation is that when Lawrence was made (early 1960s) Britain was withdrawing from Empire but still saw itself as being in position to influence events in the emerging third world, especially the Middle East.
T. E. Lawrence had shown how it could be done back in World War I, by deploying a small number of agents who could mobilize the Arab world behind vital British interests (Suez Canal, petroleum, whatever glory remained from imperial days).
Today, it may be feasible for Dissident Right activists to act as Lawrence style “agents,” mobilizing the various disparate White “tribes” and forging them into a mass nationalist movement which can retake control of their own countries.
The 2017 Charlottesville Alt Right operation might be seen as an analog to Faisal’s failed attempt to take Medina in late 1916 (prior to the start of the movie!). In the aftermath, the Dissident Right scattered to the remote deserts of the Internet, emerging only for the occasional meme raid.
Today, there are numerous different Nationalist movements in the political hinterland, explicit or implicit: the factions of the Dissident Right, the Patriot and Trump contingents (with their own Medina at the US Capitol, 6 January 2021), the European identitarian groups, Boer resistance in South Africa, even military officers who have signed open letters protesting globalist policies. They’re all in need of leadership and a vision.
Like Lawrence in 1916-18, Nationalists are up against a seemingly mighty empire, one which is transnational in scope but thoroughly corrupt, utterly delusional and has alienated much of its base. The critical thing for Dissident Right agents is to awaken a common White consciousness while networking for common activism.
And then on to the metapolitical Damascus!
I read that Lawrence once paid a burly Scotsman to administer him a severe beating with a club. Gay masochism. Lawrence’s fave book was the golden ass by Apuleius in which the protagonist is transformed into a donkey which is beaten and subjected to degradation and drudgery until he is transformed back into a human on a higher spiritual plane. Sort of like the Nietzchean idea that pain is the greatest teacher. I imagine Lawrence took pornographic pleasure in reading of the donkey’s beatings and sufferings. If you’ve watched the recent Pinocchio, which is truer to the book, there is an homage to Golden Ass, if you notice. It’s a similar tale.
to me this movie is like a davinci. It’s great and technically masterful, but there it is and that’s all. Nothing to sink your teeth into like withnail and I or Conan.
Thirty years ago, when I was in college, Seven Pillars was a favorite book and I watched the film many times. You aptly describe what makes the film great and point out central themes that I was oblivious to at the time — nation vs. empire; humanity vs. divinity.
But one thing about the treatment of Lawrence in the movie always annoyed me: the filmmakers clearly intend to psychoanalyze, explain, and disparage everything great and extraordinary about Lawrence by playing up their speculations about his ostensible homosexuality, cruelty, and vanity. It all seemed so heavy-handed, reductive, and perhaps fanciful to a young admirer of the author and hero of Seven Pillars. (Incidentally, in reading Heidegger’s Black Notebooks from the early 40s, I discovered to my surprise an extended appreciation of L. and his book.)
I really don’t agree about the filmmakers’ intention. If anything, I think the movie tends toward hagiography rather than to reductionism.
Certainly, screenwriter Robert Bolt, a card-carrying Communist, had every reason to despise Lawrence, but I think he treats him as a genuinely great man.
I would love to publish your write-up/interpretation of Heidegger’s thoughts on Lawrence.
Well, I think my (decades-old) impression that the filmmaker meant to psychologize and disparage Lawrence was based on the importance given to the scene where he is raped by the Turkish officer – which, as you note, may be wholly made up for the film. After that episode, Lawrence the movie character undergoes a total transformation, first to a self-pitying loser, then to a cruel, vengeful and domineering tyrant with his own bodyguard. I never understood what to make of all that. It wasn’t in the book. And I’m still not convinced that this central scene is meant to reflect favorably on Lawrence. On reflection, however, I concede the main point of your argument that, on the whole, the film tends to set up L. as someone to be admired. The fact, which you bring up, that Bolt was a communist is very interesting and raises the question as to why he thinks Lawrence is great. Why would a communist, one of the most thoroughgoing egalitarians, promote reverence for Lawrence? When I was an undergrad, a teacher of mine rebuked my juvenile Nietzschean insistence that Americans had no appreciation of honor or greatness (beyond a degraded notion of a collective “honor of mankind” such as Hamilton speaks of in Federalist #1.) My teacher insisted that no, in fact, democratic peoples have their heroes – e.g. Washington (this was a long time ago), Lincoln, MLK etc. – it’s just that they are all always viewed as men who bring more equality. And communists might have a Hegelian-Marxist basis for revering those they take to be their benefactors on the plane of world-history. Is Lawrence, for the filmmaker, this sort of hero, i.e., a man who in a godlike – Napolean-like – way set in motion the destruction of all hierarchies, inequalities, and backwards ways of thinking? Perhaps this sort of hagiography is not incompatible with reductionism. For the “human-all-too-human” nature of the Hegelian hero of modern progress is essential to him. “No man is a hero to his valet” … but what about to the filmmaker? Perhaps the filmmaker understands himself as something of a philosopher, i.e., one who can see and depict the hero from both the valet’s, and the wise man’s, perspective. But maybe the real Lawrence is different from Bolt’s — I wonder. (Pardon the long comment, I got carried away. Thank you for the thought-provoking review.)
The Deraa event was part of Lawrence’s book. But some people suspect it did not happen, for Lawrence’s motives for going into the city are obscure. Was it to prove that it could be done? Was he gathering intelligence? Are we asked to believe a Turkish general had people pulled off the street at random so he could decide which one to rape? I guess that is believable, given the overall depravity of the Turkish military in those days. Lawrence certainly regarded them with absolute contempt.
Is what comes after Deraa a complete destruction of Lawrence’s character? Or, as Ali says, is Lawrence “the same man, humbled”? Lawrence has his doubts about his mission and abilities. But who wouldn’t? Even Jesus wanted to dodge his superhuman destiny. So the episode is consistent with the film’s overall hagiographical (blasphemous) treatment of Lawrence.
Lawrence learns at Deraa that an unarmed prophet is less powerful than an armed one. He could not take the city on charisma alone. And what would have secured arms was money. Just before Deraa, most of his tribal allies went home for the winter because they had gathered a great deal of loot and wanted to rest. Once Lawrence resolved to bolster his charisma and his cause with a great deal of money, he gathered an army that could take Damascus.
The massacre is horrible but understandable in the context of the film. Lawrence does, however, allow himself to be caught up in the frenzy of war and lose sight of his overall goal, which he nevertheless managed to attain.
Bolt was an interesting character. His appreciation of heroic traits of character was not impeded by the ideology he claimed to profess. (Much like Visconti, whose outlook on life remained aristocratic even though he claimed to be a Communist.) Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons about Sir Thomas More is a portrayal of a man who dies a martyr’s death over something a Communist would regard as trivial. Bolt broke with the Communists after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. His last stage play was about Lenin, whom he described as “a great man” in the grip of an evil idea.
See the depravity portrayed in Midnight Express.
I can always remember the stunning visuals of the film. I watched it again about a year ago. The scene with the rival tribesman coming nearer and nearer until he shoots the one drinking from the well. How to unite such groups of warring figures remains the biggest challenge of the white cause as well. Aurens was an outsider and able to move among rival factions. Who can be such a leader among whites here today? Is there someone that can handle the outcry that would commence? Are whites even able to draw together despite our varied backgrounds? I can only hope it can come true in my lifetime.
That is one of the essential problems that we face.
I love this review! Anytime the Cyropedia is referenced I’ll probably like it.
Fun film fact – Lawrence of Arabia is the first time a desert mirage is captured on film (it’s the scene in the beginning where the camel seems to be levitating in the distance).
Howard Bloom, in The Lucifer Principle mentioned TE Lawrence as an example of isolation as the ultimate poison, questioning whether his death was something of a suicide.
“Lawrence drew together the widely scattered Arab tribes to storm Akaba. His force took the city despite seemingly impossible odds, defeating a small Turkish army in the process. After riding the desert for days and leading the charge in two successful battles, Lawrence was totally exhausted. Yet when he realized his troops in Akaba were starving, he mounted his camel and rode three days and three nights, covering 250 miles, eating and drinking on his camel’s back, to reach the Gulf of Suez and summon help from a British ship.
The sense that he was critical to the success of the social organism had given the young British officer an almost unbelievable physical endurance. When at last the war was over, Lawrence rode into the city of Damascus in a Rolls-Royce as one of the conquerors of the massive Turkish Empire.”
But this incredible man died on motor bike that he certainly never struggled to handle, on a familiar country road. No longer part of the super-organism that gave him such an incredible strength and constitution he lost his vitality. In letters to close friends he wondered what he was even doing there anymore. He said he felt like a leaf fallen from a tree in autumn.
“– he felt wrenched from the social body into which he had welded himself. He was bereft of purpose, unneeded by the larger social beast. Lawrence went back to live in his parents’ home. His mother said that the former war hero would come down to breakfast in the morning and would remain sitting at the table until lunch-time, staring vacantly at the same object that had occupied his gaze hours earlier, unmoving, unmotivated. Eventually, at the age of forty-seven, Lawrence died on a lonely country road, the victim of a motorcycle accident.”
He atrophied like a muscle no longer in use. Is there an instinct to do so when you are no longer of use to a collective that empowered you? Is it natural? Is this why spouses often dies so soon after one another? I read that when I was 21 and not a week goes by that I don’t remind myself of how important it is to be part of something and to feel needed. It’s important in this community of White Nationalists to remind each other that we are not alone. There are more adventures to come.
Nicely said. Wn is a source of strength for me too. May all our enemies get motorcycles!
Thank you so much.
He should have died with his scimitar in his hand. Valhalla or Firdos.
Very fair review of the film. Just to add though that I find no enigma in Lawrence. He was a man of self-loathing, “solitary uniqueness” and awkwardness who found a sense of triumph in being able to navigate a group of people (the Arabs) that were unable to judge him socially. His success went to his head and the film captures that, and deflating aftermath, very well.
To my mind, Bolt’s screenplay actually plays up the homosexuality, albeit in coded terms, and there is plenty of other circumstantial evidence that can leave us in little doubt: his effeminate Oxbridge ‘manner’; his desire to subvert authority; his love for the desert (really his delight in being among Arabs – something of a cliché since Wilde’s and Gide’s exploits in North Africa); his sense of emotional isolation (“I lamented myself most when I saw a soldier with a girl… because my wish was to be as superficial, as perfected” or “Intimacy seemed shameful unless the other could make the perfect reply in the same language, after the same method, for the same reasons” or “I began to wonder if all established reputations are founded, like mine, on fraud” and other easily decodable revelations in “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”).
After the war, he persuaded the highly dubious top brass to let him join an RAF boot camp incognito, despite his age, ostensibly to write the experience up, but very evidently (in “The Mint”) because he liked being among the boys.
My own modest Lawrentian anecdote is that I once lodged in the house of old woman in the village of Islip who said she remembered Lawrence going by on his motorcycle on visits to the poet Robert Graves, who lived in the village. Somehow, that simple thing reveals plenty about him. (And who knows whether he making that journey from Dorset the day he was killed?)
As so often, this simple understanding makes everything fall into place, though unfortunately it always does strip a character of much of his carefully-nurtured mystique.
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