4 ms·

Compared with what, for god's sake? Explosions, mad Arabs, trekking across the horrible desert, dim British superiors doing the dim British thing, dubious Turki

Compared with what, for god's sake? Explosions, mad Arabs, trekking across the horrible desert, dim British superiors doing the dim British thing, dubious Turkish sexual practices, etc. This is boring??? Though I must admit O'Toole does camp it up a bit too much.

alabastervlog 2y ago
Camps it up too much?! Exactly the right amount. Except the negotiation scene with Auda. He always seemed a touch too sarcastic in his delivery there, and it makes Auda seem foolish, which makes the scene worse. Like that one awkward cut in the middle of Jaws, this bugs me every time I watch it. Made even worse because the scene’s also wonderful, but that flaw… frustrating. But god, the rest? It makes him otherworldly, magnetic. In a movie full of larger than life characters (omg, the real life bio of Auda!) you can see how so many mark him early as someone to be wary of, and others underestimate him (he’s clownish!) and others follow him.
- zabzonk 2y ago
  Well, I did say "a bit" - and it is obviously a brilliant non-boring film. Actually, this has made me put "Pillars of Wisdom", which I never read before, on my Kindle to-read list.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    Yeah, I wasn't really trying to push back too hard, just taking it as a chance to banter about a movie I really like :-) Some of it's acting styles, too. You can see it in lots of the characters, a bit of what reads as over-acting today. More stage influence. Having watched a lot of older movies, I get the sense both that film acting styles developed (not necessarily improved, but, maybe) over time, and that for a long while more styles were within the range of "normal" that an audience might not be surprised or put-off by, while today the range of normal styles is much narrower and you rarely see other approaches outside of really niche films or some foreign film markets (Indian cinema!) Pillars is great, highly recommended. It's extremely different from the film, too—where the film presents a practically mythic figure (and his fall) and is bent entirely toward that purpose, the book is (perhaps contrary to what one might expect) relatively humble, even self-deprecating, and grounded. And Lawrence's writing is outstanding, clear and full of beautiful sentences, phrases, and passages—his fancy education really paid off in that department. He also penned a translation of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad) which happens to be a personal favorite. I stumbled on and read it well before I realized it was him, since he published that one under the pen name "TE Shaw", which I didn't recognize. Not a tightly-faithful translation, not a verse translation either, but reads very modern in the telling, without feeling anachronistic or losing the sense that you're reading an ancient epic, if that makes sense, and also not far enough away from the original text to be a retelling rather than a translation.
balamatom 2y ago
Well I can certainly imagine the kind of person who sees writing about such things as boring, and do wish that kind of view had more sway over people. Warfare, spycraft, and statecraft are, on some level, immensely stupid affairs; that's exactly why one of them even gets termed intelligence.
greenheadedduck 2y ago
Compared to..citizen's kane, godfather, 2001 a space odyssey, basically any of the older "top" movies.

alabastervlog 2y ago

Camps it up too much?! Exactly the right amount. Except the negotiation scene with Auda. He always seemed a touch too sarcastic in his delivery there, and it makes Auda seem foolish, which makes the scene worse. Like that one awkward cut in the middle of Jaws, this bugs me every time I watch it. Made even worse because the scene’s also wonderful, but that flaw… frustrating. But god, the rest? It makes him otherworldly, magnetic. In a movie full of larger than life characters (omg, the real life bio of Auda!) you can see how so many mark him early as someone to be wary of, and others underestimate him (he’s clownish!) and others follow him.

zabzonk 2y ago
Well, I did say "a bit" - and it is obviously a brilliant non-boring film. Actually, this has made me put "Pillars of Wisdom", which I never read before, on my Kindle to-read list.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Yeah, I wasn't really trying to push back too hard, just taking it as a chance to banter about a movie I really like :-) Some of it's acting styles, too. You can see it in lots of the characters, a bit of what reads as over-acting today. More stage influence. Having watched a lot of older movies, I get the sense both that film acting styles developed (not necessarily improved, but, maybe) over time, and that for a long while more styles were within the range of "normal" that an audience might not be surprised or put-off by, while today the range of normal styles is much narrower and you rarely see other approaches outside of really niche films or some foreign film markets (Indian cinema!) Pillars is great, highly recommended. It's extremely different from the film, too—where the film presents a practically mythic figure (and his fall) and is bent entirely toward that purpose, the book is (perhaps contrary to what one might expect) relatively humble, even self-deprecating, and grounded. And Lawrence's writing is outstanding, clear and full of beautiful sentences, phrases, and passages—his fancy education really paid off in that department. He also penned a translation of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad) which happens to be a personal favorite. I stumbled on and read it well before I realized it was him, since he published that one under the pen name "TE Shaw", which I didn't recognize. Not a tightly-faithful translation, not a verse translation either, but reads very modern in the telling, without feeling anachronistic or losing the sense that you're reading an ancient epic, if that makes sense, and also not far enough away from the original text to be a retelling rather than a translation.

balamatom 2y ago

Well I can certainly imagine the kind of person who sees writing about such things as boring, and do wish that kind of view had more sway over people. Warfare, spycraft, and statecraft are, on some level, immensely stupid affairs; that's exactly why one of them even gets termed intelligence.

greenheadedduck 2y ago

Compared to..citizen's kane, godfather, 2001 a space odyssey, basically any of the older "top" movies.