At no time did Lawrence of Arabia take my breath away, instead coming across as a polite examination of a flawed man. The images, from which I expected greatness, felt surprisingly ordinary at times. The sound mixing, while quite good in the desert, borders on awful during the interior scenes in the film's first third. Whether this is a result of the transfer to DVD or not is a question that I cannot answer, and therefore an issue I cannot discount[5].

Particularly bothersome is a scene after the attack on Aqaba. Lawrence and Serif ride their camels to the ocean, a symbolic moment after the long, impossible journey through the desert, and Serif tosses some flowers into the surf. Lawrence scoops them up and Lean cuts to a medium shot of Lawrence very clearly standing in front of a poorly executed rear projection of the ocean. Serif, in his matching shot, is doing the same. After all these beautiful, gimmick-free shots in the desert, the rear projection looks positively awful. Awful enough to take me out of the film for a couple of minutes. Honestly, I don't know if it ever completely got me back. This begs the question, is it fair to judge an entire film based on a single sequence? In my opinion, if it's something that is so out of place that you still remember it the next day, then the filmmakers have not done their job.

Lawrence of Arabia is, chiefly, a biopic, so we would be remiss to not discuss the person of T.E. Lawrence and his portrayal in the film. Structured around the personal writings of Lawrence, which he self-published for 120 of his close friends, it is an examination of one man's downward spiral into a type of madness, all the while gaining fame and prestige. Peter O'Toole portrays him as an eccentric sort, intelligent and quirky and noble and a little bit effeminate[6]. O'Toole's role is not an easy one, as he must play a character who must experience a substantial number of the extremes in the human experience. This is a man who was a British Officer lauded for his exploits, but also a man who nearly died in the desert, was beaten by Turks, nearly went mad, and developed a repulsive affection for killing.

O'Toole is exceptional in portraying each of these emotions, but at times he seems to be unsure where he is in the film's timeline, that is the character does not build and develop as effectively as he could[7]. It should also be noted that the film gives me the feeling that Lawrence, in his writings, isn't being completely honest with us (or himself, perhaps). Something about the progression of the character just doesn't fit. One minute he's in the desert, ready to take over the world, and the next he's begging for a desk job where he can do paperwork the rest of his life. Then, just as abruptly, he's back in control.