Perhaps the defining paradox of visionary British film director David Lean’s life is the discordance between his professional career, shepherding monumentally scaled productions, often in far-flung locations with zero infrastructure, and his messy personal affairs, hopscotching from one marriage or relationship to the next in a futile search for lasting happiness. “I’m able to live through a film as I can’t in everyday life,” says the subject in one of many archival interviews excerpted in Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean.
Barnaby Thompson’s exhaustively researched film is made with the full cooperation of Lean’s estate. But even when it levitates into awestruck paroxysms about the unprecedented grandeur of classics like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, it avoids banal hagiography. While the talking heads assembled include many of the world’s great contemporary directors — all eager to acknowledge Lean’s profound influence on their work and cinema in general — there’s no attempt to gloss over the tyrannical perfectionist he could be during arduous shoots.
Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean
The Bottom Line
Consummate artist, complicated man.
