David Lean’s career is framed as a daring military-style adventure, combining improvisational strategy in hostile conditions with strong command over others. His leadership is shown as theatrical, marked by confident oratory and the intensity of giving orders. The portrayal connects Lean’s approach to iconic figures such as Napoleon, young Winston Churchill, and T. E. Lawrence, while also noting Lean’s ability to see faults and experience impostor syndrome and secret doubts. The account emphasizes charm and self-deprecation in interviews despite claims of bad temper and dictatorial behavior on set. The documentary also provides a watchable history supported by commentary from many prominent directors, while giving less focus to the role of music in his films.
"Lean's career feels like more than ever like a dashing military adventure; like Napoleon or the young Winston Churchill in Sudan or, indeed, TE Lawrence in his greatest film, Lawrence of Arabia. It involved brilliantly improvising strategy in hostile terrain and imperiously imposing his command over troops who had to be subdued by force of will, as well as a mastery of the theatre involved in leadership, displaying an almost hammy sense of one's own skill in oratory and the eroticism of giving orders."
"Watching this documentary, you can appreciate how Peter O'Toole's Lawrence is in many ways a comic, absurd figure dressed up in borrowed and culturally appropriated Arab robes but one that no one would dare mock. Perhaps Lean, in his director's robes, could see what his subordinates wouldn't, or couldn't; he could see his own faults, and suffer from impostor syndrome and secret doubts."
"The movie repeatedly tells us that he could be impossibly bad-tempered and dictatorial on set but there is no film or audio record of this, just Lean himself in various interviews being endlessly charming and self-deprecating. (Although I suspect that patrician accent perhaps reverted a little, at times, to something a bit rougher under duress.)"
"Perhaps this film doesn't place enough emphasis on the enormous importance of music in Lean's greatest pictures, including the swirling themes of Maurice Jarre in Lawrence of Arabia and his adaptation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. But it does give us an intriguing and richly watchable history, supported by an impressive gallery of directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Greta Gerwig, Wes Anderson, Alfonso Cuaron, Paul Greengrass, Celine Song and Lean superfan Steven Spielberg at various"
Read at www.theguardian.com
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