u/BlackLodgeDweller378

So, this is a film that has been on my radar for a little while now, but I was waiting for my chance to see it on the big-screen.

So when I saw a cinema in my area was playing it in 70MM, I jumped at the opportunity to get myself a ticket.

and HOLY SHIT! WHERE HAS THIS MOVIE BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE?

This film was like everything I could possibly want out of an epic: Incredible scale, sweeping vistas, excellent writing, gorgeous visuals, fantastic music, and best of all, great characters.

And I think that was the key to why I loved this film so much, because, beneath all the spectacle, the part I found most compelling was the characters.

I'll start with Lawrence himself, who is truly the perfect protagonist for this story. Peter O'Toole is an icon. He plays him with a perfect urbain charm mixed with a rockstar's charisma, making him endlessly compelling to watch. And the way Lawrence's idealism at the start of the film slowly burn away as he realises his part within this conflict was really fascinating to watch, and O'Toole sells it brilliantly.

But the lead is only as good as his supporting players, and luckily this film has a fantastic supporting cast.

I loved Omar Sharif as Ali, and the way he and Lawrence go from reluctant allies to close confidantes was beautiful to watch. I read afterwards that David Lean intended for their relationship to be subtextually queer, and while I didn't read it that way upon first viewing, I definitely did see the queer aspect of Lawrence himself, with his androgyny and camp demeanour feeling very Tim Curry-esque to me.

My favourite character though would have to Prince Faisal, played by Alec Guiness. Now, obviously you can critique the casting of a white Englishman to play an Arabic leader, but it was the 60s, and that was standard practice, so I'm able to forgive it. But he was a joy to watch every time he was on-screen, and the way he's able to effortlessly outwit the English and expose their hypocrisy and chauvinism was beautifully written. I loved all his conversations with Allenby and Dryden.

Speaking of which, I did not expect to see Claude Rains in this movie, but he was really good, even if he didn't have much screen time.

I also really enjoyed José Ferrer as Bey, and it was only afterwards that I found out that he was actually the father of Miguel Ferrer, who I best know as Albert from Twin Peaks, so nice to know that talent runs in the family.

But beyond that, the technical aspects of this are unmatched. The Cinematography by Freddy Young is absolutely breathtaking, and it was absolutely worth seeing it on the big screen in 70MM just for those sweeping shots of the sprawling desert. I loved the moments where the characters were looking across the desert, and could see people that were only just visible as tiny specks on the screen.

THE MUSIC as well was unmatched. I will have this movie's main theme stuck in my head for days, and the rest of the music just conveyed such great atmosphere in every single scene.

Also, how is this movie four hours? In the sense that, even with the intermission, I could've easily sat through another whole hour of the movie, I was that sucked in by the story, the world and the characters.

Absolute 10/10. It's already joined the ranks of some of my favourite films of all time, and I can't wait to rewatch it, which I'll probably do as soon as I'm able to pick it up on 4K.

Bravo David Lean.

why?

Like, the way people talk about this guy on the internet you'd think he was either a literal saint or a literal demon. Usually someone will bring up the fact that he hit his wife Cynthia and use that as a way to completely discredit him in terms of both his art and his activism, and then inevitably a Lennon sycophant will chime in and get incredibly defensive, pointing out how he fought for love and peace spent five years in the Dakota raising his son Sean, and use that as grounds to say that he was a completely kind, upstanding gentleman and that that ultimately outweighs his past sins.

But guess what? He was both!

John Lennon was both a chauvinistic bully who was an abusive husband and neglectful father to his first wife and son respectively, and he was a man who sincerely believed in peace and who spent 5 years as a house-husband, raising his son.

Because, people are complicated, and they change as they grow older.

And I think it's important to note that we only know that John was abusive because he admitted it completely unprompted in a playboy interview when discussing the song "getting better":

>"All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically... any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster."

And I honestly find that really admirable. Here was a man who had come out the other end and could've very easily swept the ugly parts of his life under the rug and continued being adored by his legions of fans, who were all completely unaware of his faux pas. But no, he felt it was important enough to tell the world that he very much was not perfect and had many personal issues, and in our age of celebrities having to present PR driven, squeaky clean public images, that sort of maturity and willingness to forget your own ego is something we should all strive for.

RIP

I think their natural chemistry combined with their shared passion for accents and impressions would really suit this pair of phonetic experts.

Plus, I would love to see Coogan's rendition of "I'm An Ordinary Man".

When Martin is saying this, he's not criticising Tolkien and going "LOTR sux because Tolkien didn't write about Aragorn's tax policy." What he's saying is, while Tolkien isn't interested in those political questions, I am, and that's what my books are about.

Like, if he were criticising Tolkien for not interweaving complex politics into his books then that would be immensely stupid, because LOTR is mythological in nature rather than political, and Martin knows this. He even said

>"Tolkien was very interested in myth, so in the context of a mythological setup, I don't think it really would've been appropriate for him to write a book about Aragorn's reign and his challenges." (I would read it but that's just me)

But the point is, he's not criticising Tolkien, or acting as if LOTR is incomplete, but simply positioning his work as the historical/political answer to much of fantasy, essentially saying "If you ever did wonder about the political inner-workings of a place like Middle Earth, well then my books are for you."

And that reads less as a critique of Tolkien, and more like the natural extension of Tolkien's own project; that being adding verisimilitude and historical legitimacy to so-called "fairy stories".

It's an all-too-common wisdom in popular entertainment that if you have a man and a woman as your central characters, if they aren't romantically involved, there should at least be some romantic tension between them, and while I love romance, this trope is very refreshing as it shows how a strong platonic relationship between two people of the opposite gender is just as valid as a romantic one.

Andy and Maggie - Extras

The Doctor and Donna - Doctor Who

truly one of the TV moments of all time

As a younger cinephile, one of my major blindspots when it comes to directors is Stanley Kubrick, which is insane when you consider he's possibly the most talked about directors of all time. But until this viewing, I had only seen three Kubrick films; The Shining, Barry Lyndon, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Now, I really enjoyed "The Shining", even as someone who isn't the biggest horror fan, and "2001: A Space Odyssey"- which I had the pleasure of seeing in theatres twice; once in 70MM, and once in IMAX - quickly shot its way into my top 10 films of all time, but "Barry Lyndon" I had more mixed opinions on, as while I appreciated its production values and performances, the story just didn't engage me.

But I was very eager to watch this one, given that it had been on my list for a while even before I started looking into Kubrick specifically. I knew the basic premise, and some of the more iconic moments, but other than that, I was going in blind. And I'm happy to say I was not disappointed.

This movie is great, and of the three Kubrick movies I've watched, this was probably the one I found the most consistently entertaining throughout all of its runtime.

Now, another thing I knew about the film going in was that it was basically split into two halves: Bootcamp and Vietnam, and like many people, I did find the first half to be the more enjoyable.

Not to say that the second half was bad, but almost all of the iconic moments and lines came from that opening training sequence. And the other thing that the first half has that the second lacks is the absolutely insane performance of R Lee Ermey as Sergeant Hartman. So many of Ermey's line deliveries are now permanently seared into my consciousness, from "you’re the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass & not even have the god damn common courtesy to give him a reach-around!" to "you're so ugly, you could be a modern art masterpiece!"

His performance almost reminded me of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, where even though he's saying and doing the most vile shit imaginable, the character is so amped up and almost cartoonish that it ends up coming off hilarious.

It became even more hilarious when I learned that Ermey actually was a Marine drill Sergeant in real life, so I guess it was a precursor to Kevin O'Leary in "Marty Supreme" in terms of "Oh Shit! He wasn't acting!"

But Ermey isn't the only great performance in this first half, with the other two standouts being Matthew Modine and Vincent D'Onofrio. Modine is great as Private Joker, and it was cool seeing him in this after years of basically just knowing him as Brenner from Stranger Things, and his understated demeanour helped to balance the scale with Ermey's intensity, with D'Onofrio being right in the middle of the two ends of the spectrum.

Watching Private Pyle go from a well-meaning oaf to a deranged psychotic as he's worn down both by Hartman's abuse and the resentment from his fellow trainees was both extremely disturbing and genuinely heartbreaking to watch, and D'Onofrio sells the transformation beautifully, with the film containing probably my favourite "Kubrick Stare" that I've seen so far.

Now the second half of the film, as expected, was not quite as strong as the first, but it was still definitely enjoyable.

I wanna start by saying that the soundtrack throughout this whole section was great, (though I did laugh when they played "Surfing Bird" due to its association with Family Guy), and with both Ermey and D'Onofrio out of the picture by that point, Modine really gets to shine, and seeing Joker come to terms with the horrors of war was very well done, even if I didn't find it quite as compelling as Pyle's transformation.

This section also contained probably my favourite line not delivered by Hartman, when Joker is asked why he has a peace pin on his jacket, to which he replies "I think I was trying to say something about the duality of man, sir!" "The what?" "The Jungian thing, sir!" Which made me laugh.

Another thing that made me laugh was the fact that the Colonel in that scene was played by Bruce Boa, AKA the man who wanted Basil Fawlty to give him a Waldorf Salad in "Fawlty Towers".

I did enjoy most of the supporting cast, particularly Rafterman and Doorgunner, but ultimately, the second half just didn't wow me in the way that the first half did, as while it was good, it just didn't feel as unique in terms of its presentation. But it was still very good, and the strength of that first half was enough for me to come away thinking that this is a fantastic film. Not quite as good as "2001", but I'd say its on par with "The Shining".

8/10

In terms of Kubrick, the ones that I'm most curious about currently are "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Dr Strangelove".