My insomnia has returned as of late, so, the other night, I decided to fill up a few sleepless hours by rewatching my very favorite movie of all time. And I realized that, apart from a passing cameo in this old review, I’d never really written about my very favorite movie of all time.

I first saw David Lean’s 1962 magnum opus Lawrence of Arabia in the spring of 1989, when Robert Harris’s restoration screened at the late, only-mildly lamented McClurg Court Cinemas in downtown Chicago. (The theater’s 70mm projection and sound system were, at the time, the best in the city, but the place was pretty charmless otherwise.) It immediately became my favorite movie.

It is not for everybody, I know. It’s long. There’s a whiff of a white-savior narrative about it (though I would argue that one of the great things about the movie is how thoroughly and loving it sets up that trope only to thoroughly and ruthlessly dismantle it). As history goes, it’s iffy (though, in its defense, it got me interested in the actual history of the region and the era, which is complex and revealing and fascinating and—thanks to our staggeringly corrupt and incompetent administration—once again, depressingly relevant). But it has stayed at the top of my personal list. I watch it at least a couple of times a year. If it’s showing in a theatre anywhere within an hour’s drive, I am there. It’s one of a handful of movies of which I never grow tired. It’s one of an even smaller number of artworks in which I never seem to reach an endpoint; every time I see it, I notice something new.

Beyond that, it’s just about the only movie that, even though I know exactly what’s coming and exactly what’s going to happen, still lands, for me, with something close to its original impact. It took me a long time to figure out why. It’s because Lawrence of Arabia is a deeply musical movie. I don’t mean literally, sonically (though the sound design and music are great). I mean structurally. It is a subtly but relentlessly symmetrical movie, in a way familiar to any freshman music-history student. Lawrence of Arabia is a movie in sonata form.

Think about sonata form: you start off with a theme in a given key (however you’d like to define that) which is then followed by a bunch of new themes in new keys. This creates formal tension, which is resolved in the second half of the form, when all those themes return, but, this time, all in the original key. Now look at Lawrence: it’s a rise-and-fall story, the two halves neatly demarcated by an intermission. During the rise, every scene is, in effect, a new theme: new subjects, new characters, new locales, new complications, constantly modulating from mood to mood and place to place as the story progresses. In the second half, the same themes and characters return, but now everything is cast in the key of Lawrence’s downfall, his hubris and its effects on him, those around him, and history.

I suppose you could could say that a lot of movies or narratives follow this pattern, in a very loose sense. The difference is the extent to which Lawrence of Arabia commits to the pattern. It’s not loose at all. For every significant scene in the first half, there is a corresponding scene in the second half that mirrors it—thematically, textually, visually, even down to the composition of the frame and the camera angles.

Here’s an example. In the first half, Lawrence, played by Peter O’Toole, convinces Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish, played by Omar Sharif, to gather a group of Arab warriors and mount an attack on the Turkish-held port of Aqaba. In order to do this, they must cross the Nefud desert, a hazardous undertaking. They make it, but when Lawrence notices that one of their party has been lost in the desert, he insists on going back to find him, a foolhardy risk that dismays Ali. But, of course, Lawrence does rescue the man. That night, as they rest, Ali asks about Lawrence’s family, and Lawrence informs Ali that he is, in fact, illegitimate, to which Ali responds that Lawrence is, then, free to choose his own fate.

Note the composition here: Lawrence and Ali, in front of a fire, Lawrence under a blanket, Ali listening. At the end of the scene, Lawrence lies down and Ali pulls the blanket up over his shoulders. Ali then proceeds to throw Lawrence’s army uniform on the fire. And then there is a hard cut to Lawrence, resplendent in his new, dazzling white Bedouin robes.

In the second half of the movie, Lawrence embarks on another foolhardy adventure, a reconnaissance mission into the Turkish stronghold of Deraa. No success: Lawrence is captured, tortured, and assaulted. Later, as he recovers, we once again find Lawrence, lying in front of a fire, as Ali pulls the blanket over his shoulders.

Lawrence tells Ali that he was wrong, that he can’t choose his own fate, that he’s just an ordinary British soldier and that he’s going to leave the Arab army. There’s another hard cut: to Lawrence, at headquarters, back in his army uniform. The two sequences are virtual mirrors of each other. (Even literally—toward the end of the first scene, Lawrence turns and falls asleep facing away from the camera; in the second he remains facing toward it.)

Once you start looking for this pattern in Lawrence of Arabia, you see it everywhere. But I don’t think you’re supposed to notice it. Apart from a few more obvious examples—the fact that the movie begins and ends with motorcycles, a pointed callback to Lawrence seeing his face reflected in a dagger—you’re meant to feel it, to feel a sense of these larger forces playing out, and the arrogance and futility of one man thinking that he can somehow defy them. And it works so, so well. It’s a tribute to the robustness of sonata form. Lawrence of Arabia is, after all, a story of failure, a narrative that could have easily turned into a numbing slog. Instead, its encroaching bleakness is tempered and balanced by the satisfaction and even exhilaration of feeling the form resolve in such a thoroughgoing and disciplined way. 

(Speaking of problematic white-guy-in-foreign-lands narratives, a fun fact: McClurg Court was named after Alexander McClurg, the turn-of-the-last-century Chicago publisher and bookseller who first published the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.)

(By the way: that Walt Dickerson album up at the top? Legitimately good stuff. Features a pre-Cecil-Taylor-Group Andrew Cyrille on drums, having all kinds of sneaky far-out fun.)

What Have I Been Practicing?

Frédéric Chopin, Prelude in f-sharp minor, op. 28. no. 8. This is one of the Preludes that I never fully learned—in this case, because I am an impatient man, and persisted in trying to put the two hands together before they had been sufficiently drilled in isolation. But with my left hand still on the mend, I am finally in a position to force myself to give the right-hand part, at least, the attention it needs.

I love the Preludes immoderately, and have for most of my life. I’m pretty sure they were the first piece of sheet music I bought for myself, the Joseffy-edited version, in one of those crappy stapled-newsprint Schirmer “student editions” that proliferated in pre-IMSLP days. (It’s still the copy I use, although the cover fell off about twenty years ago, and I’ve had to tape in photocopies of the last few pages.) They’re quintessential Chopin but also gloriously weird Chopin, highly polished and deeply awkward at the same time. (No wonder 12-year-old me was into them—aspiration and reality, side by side.) The Preludes are Chopin’s version of McCartney II: what you get when a restlessly creative musician sequesters themself away and indulges their most curious instincts. (And, yes, I have an immoderate fondness for McCartney II as well.)

Once I started composing in earnest, I found another way to love the Preludes: a handful of them, to my ear, represent some of the greatest instances of a composer turning yesterday’s leftovers into today’s special entrée. Because, come on, that eighth Prelude is totally a bootleg étude. And the fifteenth is a bootleg nocturne! (So is op. 45.) Waste not, want not, &c.

(Speaking of McCartney II: if you don’t already, you should know that NME, the British music magazine, has been uploading a whole bunch of back issues to the Internet Archive, and they are glorious. I jumped in and promptly found this ad for the single release of “Temporary Secretary”:

Seems like something that might come in handy down the line.)

What Am I Listening To?

Just in time for Holy Week, François Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres, in this new recording by Le Concert Spirituel, conducted by Hervé Niquet (which also features music by Chien, Charpentier, and Lalande). Nobody wrings expression out of half-step inflections like Couperin le Grand. The Leçons are packed with secondary dominants and major-minor sidesteps that exist solely for their decorative shimmer, the melodies bobbing and weaving with chromatic footwork that never derails the momentum. It’s like watching a particularly daring bicycle messenger nonchalantly dart through rush-hour traffic.

As you can hear from that live performance, the one unusual thing about this recording is, unlike every other one I’ve ever heard, even the first two solo-voice Leçons are sung by a full soprano section, in unison, rather than just a single singer. As long as we’re making pop-music comparisons: between that and the unapologetic use of vibrato, it kind of gives off ABBA vibes. Works for me. After all, I suppose this, in its own way, is a Tenebrae service, too.