8.19.24 - Some notes on Lawrence of Arabia
I am watching Lawrence of Arabia for a second time. It’s a rare example of a perfect film. 5/5. Other people have written about it better. But here are my quick notes.
Comparison to Dune
- I feel that this movie did a better job than Dune at illustrating the heat and hostility of the Desert. The actors in Dune just don’t get that insane sandy or hot look
- I like the new Dune movies, and there are obviously a lot of thematic parallels here. I do feel that the more theatrical performance of O’Toole captures the ambiguity and conflict that I imagine Paul Atreides to have better than the low-key performance of Timothy Chalomet, but this aligns with a general preference for more “theatrical” performance styles. Movies used to be like plays.
The Cast
- This movie is carried by the fact that Peter O’Toole just has an insane face, and the generous tan and makeup they did to make him all bronze and shiny. He looks like a fucking character more than a person. In the best of ways. Like how Paul Giammati looks like a movie character. That motherfucker is not real.
- I don’t find Alec Guiness’ brownface offensive, because it’s done with respect, and the casting of Omar Sharif and others suggests that the casting wasn’t because they had any personal problem casting middle easterners.
- Again, I feel like movies were more like plays back then, and in the theatrical tradition it’s just not historically weird for people to play things they’re not; before access to the global talent pool, big stories just had to source from a relatively small lot of people. I mean, how many A list middle eastern actors were available to studios at this point?
- That all being said, it’s better that today we can source people who are closer to the origins of the characters. Better for story telling and I guess our social/political conventions today. This is why I find it really annoying when we unnecessarily race bend today. Why is Aaron Taylor Johnson playing Kraven? Are there NO more slavic looking actors talented enough to take on the role? Fuck Sony. More slavic representation in media.
The Cinematography
- The nighttime scenes look wrong, from a literal point of view, but they are beautiful and so much better than modern night time scenes. I looked it up and confirmed my suspicion that they were shot during the day
- I’m obsessed with 70mm. I’m obsessed with how rich the image looks.
- One thing I kept asking myself is, how come my brain can tell this movie is old? The resolution doesn’t give it away. There are modern movies shot on film stock and 70mm that don’t look old.
- Obviously, the acting style and dialogue and just the way people carry their faces is a dead give away, there’s a lot of tiny things that we can’t describe that lets us know this is an old movie. Like how you can see a white person on the street and know they’re a euro without even talking to them——just by like, the lights behind their eyes and however their mouth is tensed up. But I’m talking about image quality only. What is it about the image that makes this movie look like a period piece?
- There’s also the way the Camera moves. The movie has a lot of completely still frames that just move with the character for short little bursts and goes back to being still again. Don’t see a lot of that anymore. Truly a “motion picture.” Like a series of paintings stitched together by little beats of camera motion. Again, it has an almost old TV or play quality to it.
- I think the most significant factors to the older look are the film stock and the colors. On the film stock, it’s not the fact that it is film, because plenty of modern movies are shot on film and look contemporary. I think it’s that the stock they were using just isn’t manufactured in the exact same way anymore and there has to be some extremely subtle differences I’m picking up on. Maybe the grain structure.
- But I think it’s the colors, mostly. There is something in the structure of the blacks, and the contrast, which I feel isn’t in any modern film—analog or digital. The biggest give away of older movies is how they allow the blacks to get crushed, whereas modern cinematography seems to take greater pain to preserve details in them. But I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s not just the shadows. You see it in hair, skin, and fabrics, it’s all very punchy. The reflections on people’s skin approach white. Things have a silky, sating finish. The contrast structure looks expensive.
- It’s got to be some combination of whatever chemical developing process they did, and the photo color timing process. These methods are fascinating but largely lost to time, and I don’t think that we could reproduce this look exactly if we tried. It’s not just about sliding a contrast scale or fucking around with the curves on a color grade software. It’s a physical process we just could not completely replicated. Like trying to recreate an ancient recipe——we don’t have the mix of ingredients, soil, water quality, that the ancients had to taste what they tasted.
- Anyways, I’m fascinated by these sort of unquantifiable factors that give away somethings character. Something we can all recognize, but not quite reengineer. I don’t think anyone could “recreate” the look of this movie if they tried. It’s like that Family Guy episode where they try and visit the Family Guy pilot, but the artists just can’t really illustrate the characters like that anymore and they look wrong. Tragic and beautiful that things are locked in their times like this.
Notes on Structure
- Something I noticed about this movie is that, the everything from the music to the camera——it doesn’t do anything heavy handed as far as foreshadowing that theres something really troubling about what Lawrence is doing here until well into the movie
- We’re allowed to fully enjoy Lawrence’s triumphs early on, we’re in the moment. When he brings that guy Gasim back, it’s just a great heroic moment. In that sense it’s like Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall Street. You are more identified with the characters’ complicated narrative arc. Along for the ride.
- It’s not like Dune or other modern movies where it feels like the movie is dropping heavy hints that “hey what this character is doing might be thrilling now but its really not going to be good” (and somehow people still don’t get it). Everyone early on is along for the ride.
- Obviously, this all changes in the middle of the movie, and the first sort of spoonfed cue telling us “hey this guy is kind of a psycho” is the menacing music you hear when he’s walking on top of the train after the ambush scene. But for the most part, it’s the dialogue with other characters and Peter O’Toole’s unhinged performance that tells us what we need to know.
- I don’t think this makes the movie better or worse than movies that take a different approach. But I do think there’s an inclination today to more clearly say a bad thing is bad. Again, in Dune, the supporting characters, Chani, and Paul’s own dialogue are this sort of constant reminder that what’s going on is morally dubious.
- I’ll take a leap and say that audiences are probably a bit less media literate today, and maybe need more handholding. I talked to a girl who thought American Psycho was problematic because of its depiction of masculinity or something. As if the serial killer main character was meant to be a role model or something. I don’t know if a some modern audiences would fully get that this movie is not a particularly sympathetic depiction of Lawrence’s white savior arc.