Thoughts on Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

 Nothing is written.

This film is the degradation of noble ambition, is the loss of honour, is the slow death of a hero, is the wilting of the flowers on a garland, is the romance of bloodshed.

The deserts are vast, so white and soft in their beauty that a single figure is dwarfed by the sheer gigantism of their scale. nothing is as grand as the dunes or as great as its cliffs.

Yet these same cliffs have an underlying barbarism to them; expansive yet barren, gentle yet harsh, spiritual yet expressionless. it is easy to lose yourself and be seduced by its grandeur while it kills and corrupts...

Lawrence is a ghost, a shell of a man that was charmed by the dunes and the romance of war to the point of disillusionment. Indeed nothing is written, for a man to have accomplished so much only to die such a little death.

Originally posted on Letterboxd on 8th October, 2023