Stoo said:
What?!?
Crack, I'm shocked. I'm stunned. I'm both shocked AND stunned!
That said, I'm elated that you went to see it on the BIG screen because that's where this spectacle is meant to be seen!
There are no female characters in the film. Did your girlfriend make any remarks about this fact? Did she like the movie, overall?
Huh - I thought I'd mentioned all this stuff before.
Did she like the movie? It's her all-time
favorite movie! She feels about it and Lawrence the way people here feel about
Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indy.
In fact, it actually ties in to how we got together. We're both games enthusiasts - we met playing board and card games in a local gaming group, and after gaming one Saturday, we stopped to chat in the parking lot outside the restaurant where we were having our gaming meets. This was mid-2008, when I was in full Indy fever what with a brand-new movie out, and the long-awaited DVDs of
Young Indy (in which we of course learned Indy and T.E. were good friends) were finally out, and our conversation turned to movies and television. Before I started going on about all things Indiana Jones, she had mentioned that she tended to love so many of those underappreciated, cancelled-before-their-times TV shows, and her favorite movie EVER was
Lawrence of Arabia (through which she'd developed a strong interest in T.E. Lawrence as a historical figure, not just a movie character),
and she also had a strong fondness for fictional portrayals of real-life, historical figures, such as in movies and TV shows with fictional main characters interacting in historical events with real people. I responded with something like, "have I
ever got a show for you..."
I wound up showing her all of Indy's screen adventures, in (current) order, going all the way from "My First Adventure" to
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and helped develop her own appreciation for the series; it naturally helped that in the Indyverse, Indy and "Ned" are good, lifelong friends. She's now seen not only all four movies multiple times each (including going to AMC's recent marathon), but every installment
Young Indy at least once as well, and a few of them more than once.
And she's just as captivated by Lawrence as ever (both the movie and the man). The other Christmas my parents gave her the new Lawrence biography
Hero, based on my suggestion, and she loved it.
I'd held off on watching the movie for so long in part because I knew this was one of those movies that, more than nearly anything else, really needed to be seen properly, and I didn't want my first time diminished by using a crummy VHS release on a puny TV set or whatever; I'd long hoped to be able to see it on the big screen. As fortune had it, I found out about the 50th anniversary / restoration / Blu-ray promo screening at almost the exact same time I found out about the Indy screenings (both
Raiders of the Lost Ark in IMAX and the AMC marathon), and was absolutely thrilled. We wound up going to both events together and had a blast both times.
Seeing
LoA on the big screen was a revelation to her. Though it's her favorite movie and she's seen it innumerable times, it's usually been on VHS, with a few times on DVD or TV broadcasts, and for that movie of all movies it's just not the same. It's such a huge, truly epic film that demands a big canvas to properly show it off, and the screening did that in spades - the new restoration is gorgeous, and the movie looked absolutely beautiful. She was utterly thrilled to catch it that way (and immensely grateful to me, since she'd probably not ever even have found out about it - she was as thrilled to see it that way as I was). In fact, we went to
both showings, the 1pm and the 7pm. There aren't many four-hour epics she's willing to watch twice in a row, back-to-back, for 8+ butt-numbing hours... but this one? Oh, heck yeah - with this possibly being the last chance we'd ever have to see it on the big screen, at least for the foreseeable future, she and I both wanted to make absolutely the most of it. It simply
had to be seen this way, and she wanted to do it more than once.
So, yeah, it's fair to say she liked the movie.
Stoo said:
From what you know about Lawrence, how do you feel about his portrayal?
I think it's awesome, even though I'm aware there are differences between the portrayal and the historical record. Of course, we're still learning new things about him, even in the last couple years, so one can't really blame David Lean & co. for a few liberties. For the most part, I think it's finer than the overwhelming majority of history-based major motion pictures are at portraying historical figures and events with some semblance of accuracy. But I'm looking forward to reading my girlfriend's copy of
Hero to get a better handle on the real person.
