3 ms·

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

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.

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.