Are you surprised my viewer response to this movie falls under a queer reading?
Nearly four hours and not one female voice utters a word in its entirety.
Can't deny the homoeroticism palpable between Lawrence and his two twinks, um, servants.
And what did happen in Daraa? Let's just say David Lean leaves the door open a crack to hint at some other crack being violated.
And how about Lawrence prancing around in his white flowy Arabian robes?
Think desert, heat, and all those men. How gay is that?
His being that way serves the film's persistent question about it's subject's identity.
He questions his allegiance, his position in society (a bastard child), and why not his sexual identity?
Don't get me wrong, I love this movie. No one can deny its cinematic power.
I had some dread before seeing this again, though. But as David Lean unspools one showstopping cinematic moment after another, you sit enrapt. The jump cut from match to desert, the mirage scene at the well, the Nefud desert crossing, Aqaba, and so on.
But as long as the movie is, in the end, Lawrence is as opaque as ever, as its movie poster shows.
You still don't know him at all.
And this somehow characterizes a lot of David Lean's films. His works thrive on dissatisfaction.
The ambiguity in "Madeleine" and "Lawrence of Arabia"; the loves lost in "Brief Encounter," "The Passionate Friends," "Doctor Zhivago," and "Summertime." Yes, the bridge in the River Kwai was built. That was satisfying for like two minutes before it met its doom.
All this Lean because of Film Forum's retrospective.
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