Stu Presents: His Favorite Movies!

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Schindler's List (Spielberg, '93)



Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.

A match suddenly sparks to life in a dark room, lighting a candle with a small, fragile flame, as a Hasidic family begins to pray around the dinner table, preparing for their Sabbath dinner. As the candle burns down to a smoldering heap, all the color is slowly drained away until it becomes a cold, stark black-&-white, before the whisper of smoke is abruptly replaced by the towering black cloud erupting from a train, as we're suddenly transported back in time to the dawn of World War II in Poland. And, as the invading Nazi troops force Jewish citizens nationwide to crowd into a few cramped ghettoes in the cities, and coldly, bureaucratically "register" them for what would become their eventual annihilation, we witness the scene being set for the unspeakable horrors of The Holocaust, which we will spend the next 3+ hours exploring in Steven Spielberg's masterful historical drama Schindler's List, what I personally consider to the best movie from a man who is (obviously) one of the most iconic directors in Hollywood history, and who, to be perfectly honest with you, made what is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time.

It tells the true story of Oskar Schindler (portrayed by Liam Neeson in a magnificently humane performance), a German businessman and swastika-wearing member of the Nazi party who initially sought to profit from exploiting the "free" Jewish labor available to his factories during The Holocaust, but, through the process of witnessing the pure, unrelenting evil of the genocide firsthand, eventually seeks to save the lives of his workers, and eventually, by spending his entire fortune bribing Nazi officials, ends up rescuing 1,200 people from a certain death.

But, to imply that List is nothing more than a straightfoward biopic of its title character, or some sort of unblemished, secular canonization of a modern-day saint is doing a grave disservice to Spielberg's masterfully balanced storytelling, as, rather than seeking to whitewash the more unflattering aspects of Schindler's persona, Spielberg instead magnifies them, focusing on his brazen womanizing, his disgusting wining-and-dining of prominent, high-ranking Nazi officials, or the grotesque manner that he initially seeks to profit off of the occupation, when he brags about how wealthy his enslaved laborers has made him. In addition to that, we also view Schindler's flaws through the outside lenses of a number of other characters throughout the film, such as his wife's frustrations with his constant adultery, to the point where maître d′s just assume that she's another one of his numerous mistresses when they see her, or the way that Schindler's personal accountant Itzahk Stern serves as the stubborn, resilient manifestation of his boss's initially non-existent conscience, outright refusing at all to indulge in Oskar's celebrations of his own war profiteering.

But, rather than turning us as an audience against him, this warts-and-all approach instead greatly humanizes Schindler, so that, as we witness his slow, gradual change of heart over the course of the film, instead of being elevated over us, he seems so much more fallible and real instead, showing us the ways that great, world-changing acts are always undertaken by people who are, in the end, as fundamentally flawed as any of us.

And of course, all of Schindler's exploitations end up paling far, far in comparison to his ultimate mirror image, camp commandant Amon Goethe, masterfully portrayed in a soul-chilling performance from Ralph Finnes, who gives one of the greatest villainous performances in film history for a man whose existence was the definition of pure evil, whose sheer, icy malice and soullessness is proven time and time again from his abrupt, senseless murders of random innocent people in his camp for "fun", the way he regularly terrifies and beats his housemaid to a pulp (a cover for his own self-rage at being attracted to a Jewish woman), and even the brief stretch of the film where it seems like he's considering becoming more merciful (which was brought about merely because Schindler temporarily convinces him that restraint is a way of showing "true" power over his prisoners) is quickly ended when he embraces his true self, and shoots a Jewish boy in the head for failing to cleaning his bathtub properly.

But, to also imply that List is nothing more than a simple tale of historical good vs. evil as represented by its main villain/protagonist is again, to do the film disservice, specifically its screenplay (which was rewritten at one point to more prominently emphasize the Jewish characters and their perspectives), as it achieves a basically perfect trade-off between the personal and historical, displaying unspeakably visceral individual horrors like a family having to swallow their own diamond rings in order to conceal an amount of wealth from the Nazi regime, or a man being forced to stand and wait as everyone else around him is randomly shot in order to force a certain confession out of him, or a child having to escape from a sure death by hiding in a pool of human filth down inside of an outhouse (where there are already other children cowering in fear).

But, at the same time, the film balances these individual experiences out by remembering the overall mass of humanity who suffered and by exploring various facets of the overall genocide whenever it can, whether it be the conversations that show Jewish people minimizing their persecution by choosing to believe that it can't get any worse, the way they refused to believe that they were being wiped out with the rationalization that they were the "essential work force" for the Nazis, or a particular sequence in Auschwitz that concludes with a lingering shot of a line of people being calmly herded like lambs to the slaughter towards one of the camp's infamous "shower" facilities, a shot which includes a particularly ominous billow of smoke arising as the result of the flames of that human-made Hell, one of many sobering reminders in the film that, although it's about the story of 1,200 people that were saved from The Holocaust, the vast majority of European Jews were far, far less fortunate.

And finally, stylistically, Schindler's List surpasses feeling like the historical reenactment that it fundamentally it is, and even goes farther than having the relative intimacy of a documentary, as cinematographer Janusz Kamiński balances the potential distancing effect of his crisp, period appropriate black-and-white imagery (which I find only adds to the overall starkness of the experience anyway) with his usage of intense close-ups, point-of-view angles, and disorienting, unstable handheld cameras to make us feel like we're actually there, personally experiencing the many depicted horrors, as SS men shout in our faces for us to present our papers, we line up for "inspections" to see whether we're judged worthy to live, and the ashes of our cremated brethren fall on us from the heavens, like a demented, out-of-season snowfall.

Even at over 3 hours long, the fact that the film ever ends still ends up making it feel far too short anyway, as it's such an intensely visceral telling of one of the most traumatic chapters in human history that the raw emotion depicted within more than justify whatever occasional Spielberg-ian sentimentalities that exist in it, as List ceases to play out like a mere "movie" at all, and just feels like pure... experience, placed onscreen as a warning to never let such horrors repeat themselves, a lesson humanity has sadly proven itself all to eager to forget. However, towards the absolutely heart-rending end of the film, as a character quotes the now-famous line from the Talmud, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire", we can't help but be reminded that, although this world will always contain evil and people willing to commit it, one person's actions can make all the difference in that world, at least, that is, to the people their lives touch.



Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, '98)



The mission is a man.

Despite its status as one of the most momentous events in living memory, one that defined the entirety of "The Greatest Generation" as we know it, I don't think we got a truly definitive World War 2 film out of Hollywood for a long time, at least, not one that tried to deliver an authentic-feeling impression of the war itself (so The Longest Day, with its PG-level violence, doesn't count for me). Sure, we got some iconic films set around it, like Casablanca, but that's more of a Romantic Drama, and not really about the war directly, and the same thing goes for something like The Dirty Dozen, which was more of a men-on-a-mission flick that served as an early prototype for the modern Action movie, you know? On the other hand, just a few years after the Vietnam War, we get Apocalypse Now; doesn't really seem fair to the prior conflict, does it? However, over half a century after WWII ended, we finally did get a film that has come to define that war in a cinematic sense, with Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, a movie that both upheld a number of previous cultural perceptions of that conflict, while also radically changing certain others, resulting in a work that has stood tall within the genre of War films in general, and has endured in the decades since its release as one of the finest films in Spielberg's lengthy, unparalleled career.

It tells the story of John Miller, an Army Captain who, in the bloody wake of D-Day, is tasked to lead a squad of men in order to locate Private Ryan, a random, lowly soldier whose three brothers were all just killed in action, leading him to be chosen for early removal from combat, in order to ensure that an entire generation of a family isn't lost to the all-consuming maw of the war. Of course, Ryan's location in the active, chaotic war zone that is Normandy is currently unknown, leading Miller and his men into a grueling mission across the blood-stained landscape, as they're continually forced to engage with the enemy, their already meager numbers are steadily whittled down in the process, and they increasingly question whether saving one man is worth all of this torment, pain, and sacrifice on their parts.

Of course, if this makes it sound as though Ryan is questioning our collective cultural & cinematic perception of World War II as being America's token "good war" of the 20th century, that's because it is to a certain extent; of course, it also engages in a re-valorization of The Greatest Generation's exploits during the conflict at times, particularly in a bookending frame device that some might (not unjustifiably) describe as sappy, but I feel the film justifies this by putting us through the absolute wringer to get there, with its brutally honest, unflinching portrayal of warfare, one that places a tremendous emphasis on the traumatizing effects of combat (a stark contrast to certain WWII films that portrayed combat as "adventurous" or exciting), with Janusz Kamiński's grim, grey, desaturated cinematography, which makes extensive use of a jittery, immersive, "you are there"-style handheld camerawork, and makes it feel as though the production sent a cameraman back in time in order to document the war firsthand for the film.

This is also reflected in the film's overall unflinchingly realistic level of gore, which almost certainly would've earned it an NC-17 rating had it not had the historical background as justification for it, as SPR feels less like watching a movie at times, and more like being fed through a literal meat grinder, particularly during the now-legendary D-Day sequence, which feels like the closest thing to experiencing the war firsthand short of actually fighting in it, with such sensory details as the absolutely deafening, never-ending sound of machine gun fire, or the sight of a mortally wounded soldier screaming for his mother as his intestines are spilling out all over the sand, with the battle being portrayed in such a chaotic, vivid, and disturbing manner, it actually lead the Department Of Veterans Affairs to create a hotline for veterans to call for counseling upon the film's release.

This de-glamorization of the war also extends to the film's portrayal of the American soldiers as well, whether it be the sight of them straight-up murdering a couple of enemy soldiers who were attempting to surrender, the way that Miller's men are increasingly hesitant to follow his orders as their losses pile up (culminating in an attempt to straight-up desert the mission at one point), and the way that Miller himself is emotionally burdened by the weight of having to lead men into combat to die, in addition to the way that he's shown to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder throughout, with the first shot of him being as close-up of his hands quivering as he (tries to) steel himself for battle, which not only helps to conveys the massive weight of the sacrifice he and the rest of his generation gave during the conflict, but also showcases the inherently messy, ugly reality of any war, regardless of how justified the involvement in it may be on the part of any one nation.

And finally, the film excels not just through the unparalleled intensity of its scenes of combat, but during the quieter moments outside it as well, as its potentially hackneyed "I miss home so much" dialogue exchanges succeed through the sheer, meticulous amount of craft behind the filmmaking, avoiding feeling manipulative in order to become genuinely emotional in the best of ways, and, while some people may decry some moments here as just more examples of Spielberg giving into his overly sentimental nature, as far as I'm concerned, like the titular character himself, Saving Private Ryan "earns" it, and then some.



Saving Private Ryan use to be a personal favorite, but I fell out of touch with it over time. I still enjoy the film, but aside from the D-Day scene, I'd say its fairly bland.
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Saving Private Ryan use to be a personal favorite, but I fell out of touch with it over time. I still enjoy the film, but aside from the D-Day scene, I'd say its fairly bland.
Well in retrospect, I guess Ryan doesn't have the structural or stylistic "gimmicks" (for lack of a better term) of more recent War movies like Dunkirk or 1917 to distinguish itself, but I still feel it holds up through the sheer craft Spielberg put into it in scenes like these:




Raiders Of The Lost Ark (Spielberg, '81)



We are simply passing through history; this... this IS history.

If I were hard-pressed to name a favorite action movie, Raiders Of The Lost Ark would almost certainly be it, although that isn't because I think it has the best, er, action of any film in the genre. Don't get me wrong, the stunts in this are good and all, but I can't really say they're the absolute best I've ever seen or anything; rather, it's the grand, larger-than-life ADVENTURE of Raiders' action/adventure hybrid that puts it over the top for me, as, from the opening dissolve from the Paramount Logo into a real-life South American mountain, until its epic, iconic final shot of the Ark being lost in an endless warehouse, Raiders aims to entertain on a massive scale. And, even though it should collapse under the weight of its (to be honest) ridiculous premise and scenarios, its sheer audacious nature instead transforms it into an absolute Action classic, and just one of the greatest films of all time, period.

It achieves this minor miracle by constantly going big and then some, with shots of massive Nazi flags looming at us, Indiana casting shadows as big as the impact he's made on pop culture everywhere he goes, and the impending wrath of God lurking through sudden gusts of wind, eeriely unnatural thunder storms, and ominous orchestration courtesy of the legendary John Williams. Its pure adventure pulp at its finest, although the film doesn't just excel in its broad strokes, but through smaller ones as well, namely its rich cast of characters.

Of course, Harrison Ford puts in a classic performance as the irresistibly charming, seasoned, but emotionally/physically vunerable Dr. Jones ("Snakes... why'd it have to be snakes?"), but Raiders is also notable for its unusually rich, well-rounded supporting cast, such as John Rhys-Davies's boisterous Egyptian archelogist Sallah, Paul Freeman's arrogant antagonist Belloq, or Ronald Lacey's incessantly quivering, fish-lipped Major Toht, which has to be, to this day, one of the creepiest performances I've ever seen in my life. Finally, Karen Allen makes for the perfect foil for Indy as the fiesty Marion Ravenwood, an old flame who's still stewing over the way he walked out of her life, as the two have a great love/hate dynamic growing between them as the film goes on, and Allen adds a lot to the film's already strong sense of personality.

Besides all of that, Raiders' often sudden, shocking use of graphic violence lends it a real sense of danger, and makes you long for the days when the PG rating wasn't almost exclusively for slightly "edgier" animated movies aimed at pre-teens, like the Shreks of the world. And, while one could argue that its depiction of the "exotic" peoples present in its various locales is at best, an afterthought, and at worst, stereotypical, within the unrealistic, exaggerated context of the film, it's not so much offensive as it is there to enhance the overall adventerous, storybook feeling of Ark. The individual bits here all work together in order to serve the outstanding whole, and give Raiders more sheer character and personality than just about any other action movie out there, rendering it one of the grandest, most timeless entertainments out there in the end; don't miss this one for the world.



Gladiator (Scott, 2000)



What we do in life... echoes in eternity.

Ridley Scott has certainly had an unusually long, influential, but nonetheless inconsistent career as a director, and Gladiator stands as one of his most noteworthy, but still divisive efforts; after all, not only did it win the Best Picture Oscar, but it was also a significant commercial success, grossing close to half a billion dollars worldwide.. but, on the other hand, it still seems to displease a good number of film fans and critics regardless, including Mr. Roger Ebert himself. But, while my recent rewatch of the film did clarify certain problematic aspects of it that I hadn't really noticed beforehand, helping me to better sympathize with its various detractors, the overall power & effect of Gladiator is still just so strong, that I can't help but declare it to be a flawed modern classic, but a modern classic nonetheless.

To get my newfound issues with Gladiator out of the way right away, I have to say that I now better understand the people who complained that it was its tone was rather, er, monotone, to the point of being self-defeating, as at times, its almost relentlessly morose, downbeat nature comes across as being borderline tragedy porn, even by the usual standards of a dark revenge narrative, and there are times I can't help but wish Scott had injected just a bit more levity into the proceedings, as too many of the characters seem to do almost nothing but just wallow in their own tortured misery for the entirety of its running time. This is especially true of the main villain, Emperor Commodus, as he often comes across as a somewhat cartoonish, one-dimensional baddie, but even Maximus's own family, who are his main motivators during the film, get essentially zero character development here, as they basically just exist as plot devices, as people who are there just to die in order to justify Maximus going on his warpath later on. Now, I know they aren't anywhere near being the main characters here, so I'm not expecting much of a focus on them, but something besides just being referenced in dialogue and a few shots of them standing around in a field would've been appreciated, Ridley.

However, all of that being said, one of the main reasons why I still love Gladiator on the whole is, while the emotional beats it hits may be rather repetitive, they're still incredibly intense and unabashedly raw nonetheless; I really became invested in Maximus's epic quest for vengeance "in this life or the next", which is written with sharp, memorable, insightful dialogue, and which Scott portrays through the huge, sweeping scope and grand tragedy of the overall tale. The shots of Maximus's family waiting for him in the afterlife, and the sight of him finally reuniting with them at the end, never fail to pluck at a couple of my heartstrings, and you can feel the righteous rage in every ounce of Russell Crowe's performance here. Besides that, the rest of the cast fills out Gladiator well, such as Richard Harris's old, war-weary Emperor Marcus Aurelius, or Connie Nielson as Marcus's daughter, Lucilla, who is torn between her past love for Maximus, his blind rage at her for being related to the man responsible for his family's deaths, and the fear of her brother's twisted desires, which are alternatively incestuous at certain times, and downright homicidal at others.

And in addition to all of that, Gladiator draws a lot of strength from capturing the cultural mystique of the Roman Empire at the peak of its power, with the weight of history laying heavily on the film (in a good way), whether it be in the dusty markets of Rome, the mighty catapults and calvary of the Empire's great army, or, of course, the bloody gladiatorial combat of The Colosseum, where about a good half of the film's scenes are set, which play a bit like similar moments from mid-century Hollywood sword-&-sandals epics like Ben-Hur & Spartacus, but updated with a modern emphasis on gallons of spilled blood, and piles of disemboweled guts. And, while the action in Gladiator isn't quite as coherent as I would've preferred, with too much over-editing, shake-y handheld camera work, and overly close framings of the combat that sometimes make it difficult to make out exactly what's going on, just the sight of epic, bloody, gladiator-on-gladiator combat adds a lot to the film, whether it be the recreation of The Battle Of Carthage where the barbarians get to win this time, an intense, relentless fight with a legendary, fearsomely-masked retired champion (where ravenous tigers keep getting released at the most inopportune moments), or one final, man-to-man duel to the death with the loathsome, tyrannical Emperor himself.

Gladiator has all of this and then some, and, again, while I can now better respect and understand why certain people don't care for it, the overall experience of it for me is still just so strong, with its lavish, grandiose period detail, and Maximus's tragic tale of righteous vengeance, that I can't help but love it anyway. This is rousing, operatic, larger-than-life entertainment, the kind that we sadly don't see out of Hollywood much anymore, and with how powerful a cinematic experience Gladiator is on the whole, all I really have left to say now is... are you not entertained?



The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Leone, '66)



Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money... we're gonna have to earn it.

It may be difficult, or even near impossible to believe now, but there was a time when The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly wasn't really regarded as a great movie, at least when you look at the initial critical reaction to it. And upon hearing that, some of you may wonder, "How can that be? After all, wasn't it a genre-defining classic, and one of the greatest Westerns ever made?". Well, to put it in my own words, I'd say that TGTB&TU didn't so much as define the Western in the first place, but helped to redefine the genre, after Hollywood had spent decades building the myth of a relatively sanitized, morally black-and-white vision of the American frontier. So given that background, it's no surprise that some critics were hostile to the film, as part of a larger bias against Spaghetti Westerns in general; after all, who was Sergio Leone and these other "Eyetalian" filmmakers to tear down their memory of the West from the outside, tarnishing the image of the most quintessentially American genre? However, it's precisely that kind of cultural vandalism that helped distinguish the film in the first place, allowing it to become not just one of the greatest Westerns, but also just one of the greatest movies of all time, in my humble opinion.

This is clear right from the first few seconds of the movie, as a wide shot of a vast, sun-baked desert, the kind of scenery that you could see in any number of Westerns, suddenly becomes an uncomfortably tight close-up of an ugly, sweaty man as he unexpectedly lumbers into frame, showing us the literal face of the "real" West, or at least Leone's unique vision of it, as he will continue to reenvision its familiar iconography for his own purposes here. It's an aesthetic that's both highly dynamic, and as gritty as the grain on the print itself, as the locations here are universally rough and shabby, with nary a sanitary soundstage in sight, as live flies constantly buzz around, and we see a never-ending Mount Rushmore of various sweat, grime (and occasionally blood)-covered faces in great detail, creating what is still the filthiest-looking vision of the American West I've seen on film.

This dirty feeling isn't just limited to the film's visuals, however, as it also extends to the main characters and their lack of traditional morality, with Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes ("The Bad") murdering multiple people, including a child, in just his first few scenes, Eli Wallach's Tuco ("The Ugly") living as a crafty, motor-mouthed Mexican bandito, wanted for at least a dozen different crimes in just as many counties, while Clint Eastwood's gunslinging Blondie (the so-called "Good") is motivated purely by personal financial gain, and only does one truly good thing the entire movie (and even that is still partly to benefit himself). A more accurate title would be The Morally Ambivalent, The Really Bad, And The Almost Just As Bad, but that's a big part of why the film has held up so well over half a century since its original release; it doesn't exist in order to justify some outdated, self-aggrandizing myth of "Manifest Destiny", but in order to present a darker, harsher portrayal of the West, one that feels more honest than many of its cleaner predecessors, regardless of how uncomfortable some may have been with that at the time.

Besides that, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is also exemplary for Leone's amazing overall direction of it, as it serves as a sort of culmination of his career up that point, taking the comparatively smaller scales of the previous Dollars films, and majorly upping the scope in its depiction of the mad, elaborate dash for treasure that is the central plot, both setting the stage for the director's future epics, while also serving as the all-time peak in his impressive body of work. However, while you may picture historical figures having dull, stuffy conversations in ornately decorated rooms when you think of epics, TGTB&TU is an epic that keeps its overall sense of fun from lagging, even with its 2 & 1/2+ hour runtime, as there are plenty of moments of levity, lots of colorful dialogue, and a generally playful mood, as seen in a great moment when a "Confederate" soldier brushes himself off to reveal the blue uniform beneath an accumulation of grey dust, before a sudden cut reveals our protagonists having been taken as prisoners of war in a Union Army camp.

In all honesty, this might just be the most purely entertaining movie I've ever seen, and even watching it now, twenty years after my original viewing, I found myself enjoying myself just as much as I did the first time, with so many moments here constantly bringing a faint smile upon my face, giving me the same exact sensations I felt when I was fourteen. I mean, Ennio Morricone's score by itself is fantastic, and about as iconic as movie music gets (and I'm not just talking about the "coyote yell" of the main theme, either), but how well it's used to underscore the onscreen action here? It's just glorious, glorious filmmaking all-around, resulting in an experience that's pretty much as close to perfection as movies get (hell, even the occasionally obvious English dubbing has its charm), and while the film was responsible for disregarding a lot of the myths surrounding the Old West, it replaced that with just as many of its own, creating reverberations not just throughout the rest of Eastwood's lengthy career, but the entire genre of the Western as a whole. To borrow some language from the Bible, it's the stone that the builders rejected, that ended up becoming one of the cornerstones of the modern Western, one that still stands tall, even to this day; "Go, go, amigo...".

Favorite Moment:




Victim of The Night
That's my current favorite Western.
I think I'm going back to Silverado for a little while. Though I haven't seen it in like 15 years.



I think I'm going back to Silverado for a little while. Though I haven't seen it in like 15 years.
Don't think I've heard of that one. I'll keep an eye out for it.



Victim of The Night
Don't think I've heard of that one. I'll keep an eye out for it.
It's fun. A rebuttal to the Revisionist Western.



I think I'm going back to Silverado for a little while. Though I haven't seen it in like 15 years.
+ for Silverado. I was surprised at how much I liked it. The comedy is lower key and comes from the character's personalities vs low hanging fruit type humor...and it's an engaging overall western story that one doesn't have to like westerns to enjoy. I'd rate it highly.



That's my current favorite Western.
I'd say that at least Unforgiven is just as good, but TGTB&TU is certainly tied for being my #1 in of the genre, and speaking of Westerns, rewatching it earlier this year struck me just how relative the concept of deconstruction is to a genre, based on what had come before it. I mean, The Searchers might have struck people as being a deconstructionist Western at the time it came out, given Ethan's less than savory personal aspects, but at least
WARNING: spoilers below
he ultimately decides to become a "good guy" by the end,
while Blondie never really does anything in his film that doesn't directly benefit him personally. I mean, it was good that he blew that bridge up and stopped the senseless fighting over it, but he didn't do that just to stop the fighting, and I get the feeling that if he could've snuck past the two armies without getting involved, he would've. Not saying any of that as a criticism of his character though, since it's really the opposite, as it shows how refreshing Leone's take on an increasingly stale genre really was at that time, you know?



Victim of The Night
Yeah, just kinda like, "Hey guys, y'all been doin' the Revisionist thing for a decade or so, and it's great, for sure, but also here's one that harkens back to the classic heroism of many old Westerns, and, hey, not bad, huh?"



Yeah, just kinda like, "Hey guys, y'all been doin' the Revisionist thing for a decade or so, and it's great, for sure, but also here's one that harkens back to the classic heroism of many old Westerns, and, hey, not bad, huh?"
Sure; I mean, something like Open Range is about as quaint a Western as you can get post-50's, and I still liked it a lot, so I wouldn't be opposed to checking out some more traditional examples of the genre, definitely.



Lawrence Of Arabia ('62, Lean)



Nothing is written.

The Arabian desert; an absolutely brutal, pitiless, and unforgiving landscape, the ruthless, scorching daytime sun beats down on it relentlessly, as a veritable ocean's worth of sand stretches out to the horizon, seeming to go on for an eternity and beyond, creating one of the harshest, most inhospitable places on the planet. Even more endless than this desert, however, are the sheer complexities of the human soul, both in its capacity for good as well as evil, and in almost no other person were these inner depths and contradictions explored deeper and further than in Thomas Edward Lawrence, whose wartime exploits in Arabia were immortalized in David Lean's 1962 classic Lawrence Of Arabia, one of the last (and one of the best) "hurrah!"s of the old-school Hollywood historical epic, and also just one of the best films of all time, period.

The film tells the story of "T.E. Lawrence", a British military officer who, during World War I, was dispatched to Arabia to serve as liason between his government and the Arab rebels who, at the time, were not only struggling for their independence against the brutal dominion and oppression of the Ottoman Empire, but also against the ancient, bitter tribal divides that still threatened to tear them apart, even in the face of far greater, more urgent crises. And, if you're familiar with the history of the real "Lawrence Of Arabia", you already know that he was fairly successful in his quest to guide the Arab Revolt; he made alliances with various Arab tribes, leaders, and even royalty, helped lead them in numerous successful raids against the Turkish Army, and even oversaw the captures of the strategically vital outposts of Aqaba and Damascus, the capital of Syria. However, the main question that David Lean poses to us in Lawrence Of Arabia isn't whether or not Lawrence succeeded in his physical journey (although the overall fate of the Arab world post-war poses that question naturally), but rather, at what price did that success cost his soul?

Over the course of Arabia's near 4-hour(!) running time, Lean compellingly tells the story of Lawrence's journey, both in a purely aural/visual sense, as well as in the inner, personal struggles of the man himself; Maurice Jarre's majestic, sweeping score still stirs the soul just as much even half a century later, while Frederick Young's breathtakingly epic cinematography fully captures the harsh, impossibly expansive beauty and majesty of Arabia, with its ugly, jagged rock formations, and disorientingly vast, incredibly parched stretches of sand that often threaten to swallow the characters whole, both visually and literally. As for Lawrence himself, Lean methodically captures every defining moment in his quest, painstakingly displaying the journey he takes from being a borderline insubordinate, restless intelligence officer stewing away in a "nasty, dark little room" and lusting to experience some sort of excitment in the desert, to a cynical, world-weary adventurer, disillusioned both by the bloody reality of front-lines warfare, and the self-serving, behind-the-scenes ambitions of the nations waging such wars.

Peter O'Toole's star-making performance as Lawrence is still one of the all-time greats, perfectly capturing the man's initial, seemingly insatiable hunger for adventure, followed by his gradual but confident winning of the admiration of various, vitally important Arab tribesmen after they're initially suspicious of the foreign "Englishman", before his initial vision of an independent Arabia is dashed by the colonial ambitions of European powers, including those of his own country, and his extended exposure to the true, ugly horrors of tribalism, colonialism, and of course, war, transforms his innate self-masochism slowly but inevitably into a merciless outward bloodlust. O'Toole's portrayal here is as vivid as you could expect from any actor, past or present, with his piercing blue eyes and intensely emotional, quivering facial expressions combining to create one of the finest, most unforgettable embodiments of a historical figure on film, and one of the greatest tragic heroes in the history of cinema as well.

And finally, despite having one of the longest runtimes in the history of non-experimental film, Lawrence Of Arabia still manages to feel its length in the good sense of the phrase, alternating between lengthy but (almost) never tedious physical travails across unforgiving, awe-inspiringly HUGE expanses of the Arabian desert, mixed in with scenes of strikingly personal, intimate character development and political maneuverings, not merely with Lawrence himself, but for just about every character around him as well, whether it Sherif Ali's tug-of-war between his hopes for Arab independence fighting against his innner xenophobia against Arabs of other tribes, the "slim customer" Mr. Dryden's naked, unashamed desire for future colonial exploitation of the Arabian peninsula, or Jackson Bentley's journalistic eagerness to find an idolistic figure to "sell" the war to his readers being dashed by his discovery of what kind of man Lawrence really is (or at least, the kind of man the war has turned him into), is a multitude of rich characterizations that just wouldn't be possible with a running time cut to be "friendlier" to general audiences. In all of this and more, Lawrence Of Arabia truly proves itself to be an epic to end all epics, and if it had to be one of the notes that the Hollywood of old was meant to go out on, what a magnificent note it was, indeed.