4. The Eastern Desert and the Lone Hero

This chapter yokes together a sixties film and a nineties film, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The English Patient (1996), based on texts nearly seventy years apart (the former, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) and the latter, Michael Ondaatje’s novel of the same name (1992). Both films feature the initially disinterested, hard-bitten hero in the adventure travel film who is transformed by love—one for a people, another for a woman. Both feature the desert as a theater for the lone adventure hero, similar to the Wild West. In one the figure is located in the military, in the other unprotected by military. Both films feature the hero bonding with Arabs: Lawrence unifies Arab tribes; Almassy communicates easily with them and is helped by the Bedouin. The Arab is constructed in specific ways: loyal, warring, tribal, but undoubtedly the other in both films. Ondaatje’s novel, unlike the other, features a love interest. In the desert the character is at home—seen in his knowledge of the language, his navigating of sandstorms and the danger of desert; in this the films capture the romance of the old traveler’s tale.