Lawrence of Arabia Analysis

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Directed by: David Lean
Cinematography by: F. A. Young

The film captures the vastness of the desert, and the landscapes through wide shots in which humans are just like 'dots' (referring to Orson Welles in The Third Man) and these shots remind us of the largeness of life and that we are mere dots in the larger scheme of things. The scene in which Lawrence says that he enjoyed killing, and that there something is not correct - the camera moves slowly into him from a long shot and for the first time I understood what camera movement can do - I could never feel a dramatic difference between a static shot, and a subtle push in - in this scene it lays emphasis on his dramatic confession, and his guilt. The scene in the beginning where a man kills Lawrence's guide because he drinks water out of his well - we see the person arriving in exactly their perspective - like a small dot from far away to someone dangerous. The blue sky in a lot of low angle shots, the red sunset after the match is blown - the images are so vivid in my mind. 

This film felt epic in the true sense of the word - the way we see hundreds of extras with camels or horses in the background, such shots are always tough to capture no matter how much technology can help - in an extra wide shot probably people can be created by adding dots, but the way this film captures the hundreds of people - I could feel every person being alive and moving - and again, it's not about how much money they'd have spent for those shots, it's reminding us of the largeness of life. Steven Spielberg talked in the documentary Spielberg about how Lawrence of Arabia made him want to become a filmmaker - the influences are evident in his work - he too captures the largeness of life in his films. I'm sure the desert scenes in the Breaking Bad universe are also partly inspired from this film, or The Searchers - the source of inspiration for David Lean to capture vast landscapes in this film.