Lawrence of Arabia is playing an engagement at Seattle's Cinerama theatre. As Roger Ebert says, see it in 70mm on a big screen. This experience is on the short list of things that must be done during the lifetime of every lover of film."

I couldn't agree more. At some point near the intermission, I thought, this movie has not aged well. By the end of the film I was shaking with joy. Today I've heard the evocative theme echoing in my head all day.

I think the extra length is part of what makes this film an epic. To be fair, this isn't a film that would be made today, and not just for financial considerations. Lawrence of Arabia lingers on its shots. The action comes to the camera, and then goes away. And there's the shots that make this film required viewing in a cinema and no other place: the camera trained on the horizon, as a speck in the distance shimmers into a figure, and then into a man. Those shots were held longer in my memory. And they are what makes this film for me.

The novelty my recent viewing brought to me this time was what a myth the film constructs. Like all folk heroes or demigods, Lawrence life has a definite end, and its failures and squalor. He sets out on his hero's journey, but as a pawn of the gods of Great Britain and Arabia. This hit me as Ali and Lawrence sneak into town like El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle in Watership Down.

Part of the movie's appeal for me is that it isn't just a war story, or the story of one man's journey. Omar Sharif's Sharif Ali develops as much as or more than Lawrence, as does Anthony Quinn's Auda abu Tayi. We see Ali develop in our eyes and history's from a brutal nomad into a politican, and the prime mover of the Arab Revolt. The hurt in his eyes when Lawrence fails inflames the betrayal the audience feels. And Tayi is part of a long line of greedy, redeemed rogues, from Rick in Casablaca before ehim to Han Solo in Star Wars and beyond. It's beautiful that the film takes the time to give both men moving, poignant curtain calls before the end of the movie.

In college, a teacher named Nader Nazemi spoke about the movie. He said it was one of his favorites, thanks to Alec Guiness' performance, but complained about the racism. At the time, because he said the Arabs wouldn't have needed the help of a single white man to defeat the Turks, I thought that was the focus of his complaint. But the sight of the film of the Arab Council squabbling at the end of the film, it's right out of Birth of a Nation. So I can see his point.