When I first saw Lawrence of Arabia, it was after many years of subconsciously knowing of its greatness, its grandeur, its beauty, its sand. It is true, that one can know about all these things well enough by cultural osmosis, but actually seeing the thing is something darn well else. Lawrence of Arabia is perhaps the prime popular example: a film to be experienced with all of the senses, made for all of the senses, by a master director. I think David Lean was so great that his greatness ultimately became the only criticism that could be leveled at him (more to come on this later). Watching something on the scale of Lawrence is to witness size as beauty; freedom from filmic restrictions of space. And of course, the glory of camels. Yes, the camels. When I first saw Lawrence, more than the awe of the infinite desert, the awe of the endless expanses of sky, I was struck by the awe of the camel. The scenes of merely watching men riding, talking, clearly perched atop bouncing camels filled me with such delight and moreover, affection for the whole project that they became emblematic of the entire film. For, beyond the desert, to see a camel's lip flap as he trots is to witness eternity as well.
The presence of the camels in the film is so unique and wonderful that it stands for a few things immediately: One, the first perhaps unconscious revelation is, I think as one sees the camels amidst the huge sweeping valleys of sand, that 'Hey, this is all real!' The camels represent the film’s dedication to reality and on a deeper level, the extraordinary precision and grace of David Lean as a director. Part of the excitement of Lean's (epic) pictures is precisely this "Hey, he really did it!" quality. The established trust of his style is that on the one hand his subjects (at least in the later years) were unquestionably huge, yet also unquestionably real. There aren't any process shots in Lawrence (the beach at Aqaba looks like one, but that's only because the sunset photography is so good it looks unreal), Damascus and the other cities were really built and this is one of the first elemental, (sometimes subconscious) frameworks of a Lean movie. Golly, that bridge really did blow up in Bridge on the River Kwai, and it wasn't a miniature either! Not that reality per se means anything, but within the other glories of Lean, it is fundamental and one of his trademarks; I'll call it the Reality of Scale. The scale of the Babylon set in Intolerance is impressive, so are the sets in The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, but Lawrence of Arabia's grandness knows no artificiality (as theirs sometimes do). The camels are frequently taken for granted, but a moment of objective thought confirms their specialness. To call Lean’s film gleeful might seem a paradox, considering the often overbearing control of his cinematic style, but on second look it’s only the frame that is noticeably rigid, the contents are full of vibrating wonder. Most of Lawrence is consistent visually: Rigorously-framed groups of men against a split vista of pale blue and brown on real camels (made more apparent by their frequent grunts), but the sense of discovery within the frames enlivens them. There is a constant marriage of firm, obstinate cinematography with vibrant liberating imagery. The opening motorcycle ride is a key example. Often the rigidity of the cinematography works as a spring board for surprisingly kinetic motions, as in the early shooting at the well. These images conjure the unique mixture of feelings Lawrence evokes: breadth, dignity, wonder, adventure, folly and affection.
But to get back to the camels; the realness of animals onscreen makes for a particularly unique emotional reaction between screen and viewer. Many have appropriated this for various effects, but the subtle use of David Lean's affects me most, I think. The direct emotional value of animals on film can be used irresponsibly, emotionally and morally. The powerful emotional effect that the abuse of animals, for instance, has when portrayed, is frequently felt as discomfiting exploitation, irresponsible manipulation. When Godard had the pig in Weekend (actually) killed it gave the film an even more overtly sinister feeling, a slaughterhouse horror show. And one of the most lauded films of Bresson, Au Hazard Balthazar, stars a donkey who undergoes various torments and slights until his death in a pasture among sheep. This is another example of a film that makes me morally uncomfortable due to a morbidity in tone that upsets the feeling of purity and beauty sought. One can easily feel emotionally set-up in a film of this kind and it works against a pure reaction. I much prefer the ubiquitous camels of Lawrence of Arabia. They are just there, they just exist, humorously, absurdly, magnificently. They're part of the story like the horses of cowboy movies, and as we watch them trek through the sand, and kneel grudgingly to let Omar Sharif on and off, they provoke reverence and mirth by the lack of emphasis. There are few humorous camel hijinks to warm us up to the strange other-wordly creatures, they simply appear in the desert with Lawrence from the outset and we are left at our leisure to appreciate them and stare.
